Meet Deep Bajaj: Founder and mentor to underdog Indian startups

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“It was time for me to step back and let Sirona soar," says Bajaj over a video call from Gurugram, where he is based. “When we did the deal with Good Glamm two years ago, it was a path-to-acquisition sort of a deal, but the reason I decided to let them run the company is simple: we had done what we could in the last decade in terms of innovations for the brand. We’d introduced a series of new products that weren’t being made for Indian women at the time—whether you talk about a stand-and-pee device, natural anti-chafing cream, organic period pain relief patches or sanitary disposable bags. I felt I had played my part and now it was time for better people to take it offline (into stores)." 

Three months after the acquisition, Bajaj sounds relaxed and raring to go. For a serial entrepreneur who’s always run his own businesses since 2006, Bajaj has taken a shine to a new informal role: of being an angel investor and mentor to up-and-coming startups in the country. 

“Startups are my hobby and I am currently focusing on turning around underdog startups with potential but limited resources," he says, revealing that he has invested in around 50 startups. Some of the names he shares include copper kitchenware brand P-TAL, health gummies brand What’s Up Wellness, last-mile welfare delivery service Haqdarshak, outdoor gear brand RoadGods, women’s footwear brand Trase, and flower subscription brand Bring My Flowers. “It starts with the founder’s passion. A founder who is deeply driven by their purpose is more likely to persevere through challenges," he says about what he looks for in a startup when he’s deciding to back it. “Beyond that, I evaluate whether the problem they’re solving is meaningful, scalable, and has a clear target audience. Clarity of vision and their ability to adapt is also crucial." 

A clear vision and an ability to adapt to situations also underline how Bajaj, along with his brother, ran Sirona Hygiene and made it one of the leading femtech brands in the country. When they started the company in 2014, the femtech category was pretty much non-existent. The main players in the feminine hygiene space at the time were brands like Stayfree and Whisper from multi-national FMCG companies. Besides sanitary pads, there was little else in the name of feminine care, and topics like period-care, PMS and menopause care were not part of the health discourse at all. 

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In a field where there weren’t many precedents—Gurugram-based Pee Safe was another startup that launched around the same time—Bajaj says the only way to establish a self-funded venture was to constantly innovate. The first innovation that came out of the Sirona stable was Pee Buddy, a stand-and-pee device made for women, designed by Bajaj. The story of what led him to create it is part of Sirona’s lore today. 

“I had seen women in my family suffer owing to the lack of hygienic toilet facilities, so I suppose you could say that I was on a quest to do something for them," says Bajaj. His wife had gone through a miscarriage because of a urinary tract infection and he was appalled by the condition of toilet facilities for women outside the home. There’s another anecdote he cites of his wife finding toilets on a business class flight woefully inadequate. Bajaj also recalls the casual observation made by a female friend on a road trip to Jaipur in 2013—of having seen a woman in Europe using a contraption to stand and pee. “Everyone joked it off at the time but the thought stayed with me. I thought if I could give my wife and mother a similar device, I’d solve their problem." After tinkering with ideas and designs for a year, Bajaj succeeded in creating a prototype of Pee Buddy, and even got a design patent for it.

“That was the beginning and one thing led to another," he says, admitting that he never expected the product to take off as it did. Pee Buddy, as per the official website, has sold 5 million units till date. Another product that did well were menstrual cups, with about 2 million of them being sold. The idea for launching them in India, Bajaj reveals, came from a customer. “I was distributing Pee Buddy at a conference and this lady came up to me and said, why do you not launch menstrual cups in India?" 

Sirona launched several other products across categories of toilet hygiene in the next decade, focusing on period care, intimate care, personal safety and sexual wellness—the ideas for them coming off customer suggestions, focus groups and team discussions. The underlying vision that guided them: to solve unaddressed intimate, menstrual and toilet issues of women.  Bajaj’s close involvement with the femtech business often sees him being described as “femtech pioneer of India", but cutting to the present, it’s a closed chapter... for the time being. “I don’t think I’ll be dabbling in femtech anytime soon," he confesses. This doesn’t mean he’s completely washing his hands off it either.

“The challenges around menstrual and intimate hygiene are far from resolved. I’ll continue to raise awareness and support initiatives that bring meaningful change to women’s lives," he says. 

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Bajaj may come across as a seasoned entrepreneur, but as a kid growing up in a middle-class family in Delhi, he barely had any ambition. “You know, no one ever asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, so I didn’t think too much about it," he laughs. That said, as the son of a small businessman, there was a strong instinct to be financially independent early on. “I started working straight out of school," he says. His first job right after class XII, around 2001, for a salary of ₹6,000, was door-to-door selling of courses by eLearning platform eGurukul.com. Then, during his graduation years at Shaheed Bhagat Singh College in Delhi, where he pursued a degree in commerce, Bajaj landed his first and only salaried job at Birla Sun Life Insurance. When juggling college and work became difficult, he prioritised the latter and chose to do a B.Com correspondence course. “I felt that I wasn’t doing much in college and there was this fire in me to make money," he recalls. 

The turning point during those early years, he says, came when his father used his modest savings to send Bajaj to Australia for a two-year MBA course at the Australian National University. Even there, Bajaj chose to work, and went so far as to shorten his two-year course to a one-year Master of Management programme. “I held two jobs while I was doing my course. I’d work in the afternoons for Hutchison, the mobile telecommunications company, and in the evenings, I’d work at an Indian restaurant," he reminisces. It paid off. “I think I managed to pay back almost 80% of the loan my father had taken to send me to Australia," he says. 

Returning to India in 2006, Bajaj started an event management company called Thyme Advertising with a friend and ran it from 2006-10. “We used to do large concerts and corporate activations and we did fairly well, earning ₹8-10 crore every year," says Bajaj. By 2010, the drive to do more left Bajaj feeling restless and so, in 2011, he moved on from Thyme, now defunct, and joined his wife, Rashi, to run her entrepreneurial venture Carpet Couture. “My wife was starting her own business in handmade carpets, and since I had the time, I decided to join her and help establish the business," he says. What followed was Sirona Hygiene. “It has been a mad run but I think I just made the best of what life gave me at the time," he says. 

Having run businesses all these years, it’s probably natural for Bajaj to feel impassioned about supporting young entrepreneurs. “The biggest learning for me has been that businesses are built by people, not just products. You’ve also got to surround yourself with the right team, and since what works today may not work tomorrow, you’ve—at the risk of repeating myself—got to be adaptable." 

What keys him up further is India’s buzzing startup culture. Almost every other youngster has dreams of running a unicorn company some day. A 2023 report by Nasscom in collaboration with Zinnov, published in Mint in February that year, had stated that India continues to be the third-largest tech startup ecosystem in the world after the US and China. Bajaj attributes “access to resources, mentorship, and funding" for this new wave of entrepreneurship. “What excites me is the sheer diversity of ideas—startups are solving real-world problems, often with a unique local perspective," he says. And as a partner to startups in the 0-1 phase, he is happy being their voice of reason. “In my conversations with these young founders, I often find myself telling them to focus on customer feedback and have the patience to play the long game..." 

How does he plan to spend his free time now that he is no longer actively running a company? “I have plans to do some writing," he says. But on top of his list of priorities is to relax a little and spend time with his family. “One of my biggest regrets is that I didn’t get to spend enough time with my daughters in the last eight years. I don’t know when my eldest turned 12. So, until I figure out the next problem that will get me out of bed, I will be spending all of my free time with my girls," he says. 

Now that’s a good new year resolution. 

QUICK 3

CEO who inspires you: Ratan Tata, I loved his humility.

Your indulgence: Sunglasses, I have 32 of them. 

A dish you cook well: Spaghetti aglio e olio

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