How Bombay Shaving Company started

Shantanu Deshpande founded Bombay Shaving Company in 2015, drawn to a category most people never thought about deeply: the everyday shave, and how little attention Indian grooming brands had paid to actually improving it.

The problem they saw

Men's grooming in India was dominated by a handful of large, long-established brands offering fairly basic razors and shaving creams, with limited innovation and little sense of shaving as something that could be a considered, enjoyable ritual rather than a chore. International premium grooming brands existed but were often expensive or hard to access, leaving a gap for a brand that could bring better-designed, better-formulated products to Indian men at a reasonable price.

What they sold first

Bombay Shaving Company launched with shaving razors, blades, and grooming essentials designed with more attention to detail than typical mass-market options, sold directly to customers online. The early focus was on treating shaving as a routine worth doing properly, with product design and packaging that reflected that positioning rather than treating grooming as an afterthought category.

The decisions that mattered

Selling directly online allowed the company to build a relationship with customers and educate them on better shaving habits and product choices, something that would have been much harder through traditional retail shelves stocked mostly with familiar, long-standing brands.

The company treated grooming as a considered ritual in its marketing and product design, distinguishing itself from utilitarian incumbents by paying attention to the details — blade quality, ergonomics, scent, packaging — that a purely functional razor brand might ignore.

Bombay Shaving Company expanded its range over time into a broader set of men's grooming products, using the credibility it built around shaving specifically to introduce customers to adjacent items, rather than launching a wide, unfocused catalogue from the outset.

What a small brand can take from this

An everyday habit that customers have stopped questioning can still hide real room for improvement. Shaving was not broken in any obvious way, but there was clearly space to do it better.

Positioning a routine, functional product as something worth caring about can differentiate a brand from established competitors who have grown complacent about their category.

Building expertise and trust in one specific product before expanding gives a new brand credibility it can carry into later launches, rather than spreading effort thin across too many products too soon.

If you want to bring more care and craft to an everyday category, you can build your own store with early access.

Varchas Stores is not affiliated with Bombay Shaving Company. This is an editorial story based on public reporting, written for founders who are starting out.