Kunal Popat built R for Rabbit by taking baby steps

"I am old fashioned,” says Kunal Popat on a video call from his office in Ahmedabad, wearing black-rimmed glasses and a white shirt with a pen peeking out from the pocket. The 43-year-old is not a regular on social media, speaks in hard numbers and prefers “step-by-step” to “aggressive growth”.

Step-by-step embodies his approach to establishing the premium baby brand R for Rabbit with his wife Kinjal, which they started in 2014 with an initial capital of about ₹40 lakh from their savings. It was valued at ₹850 crore by the end of 2025, he says. The buzz for the brand grew through word-of-mouth on moms’ groups on WhatsApp.

R for Rabbit is a dominant player in the homegrown, premium baby product segment with essentials ranging from baby gear to diapers and cribs, targeting the age group 0-5. The market research firm Technavio forecasts India’s baby care industry to grow at a CAGR of 24.3% from 2025 to 2030, driven by the increase in disposable income and rapid urbanisation. It is evident in the steady rise of homegrown childcare brands like Mee Mee, Luvlap, Mother Sparsh and R for Rabbit that emphasise safety and quality and cater to specific needs. In August 2025, Popat raised funds to the tune of ₹240 crore in the Series B stage—led by the investment firm Filter Capital and venture capital firm 3one4 capital—indicating ambitious expansion plans.

Popat comes from the heritage city of Gondal in the Saurashtra region of Gujarat. His family owned a wholesale grain shop. He moved to the state capital to pursue chemical engineering from Nirma Institute of Technology in 1999. As a fresh graduate, he secured a job with a specialised polymer factory Gharda Chemicals in Ankleshwar, Gujarat in 2003. Within a year and a half, he realised it wasn’t the right fit and enrolled for a brand management degree from ICFAI, Ahmedabad, followed by an MBA in marketing from Mumbai’s Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies in 2006. Thereafter, he returned to Ahmedabad and entered the IT sector with Tectona Soft Solutions as a business executive and left as a senior executive after 18 months. This was followed by Sophos, also in Ahmedabad, where he spent 11 years and climbed up the corporate ladder to become assistant vice-president, overseeing expansions in West Asia and Europe.

Although his career in IT took off, he couldn’t stop thinking about starting a business. “It was a default bug. I knew when the time was right, I would take the leap of faith. It arrived when I was blessed with a daughter in 2011.” When the Popats welcomed baby Aarna that year, they faced an unexpected problem. It had to do with the traditional crib-cum-swing godhiyu used in Gujarati homes. The hammock-like cradle has a removable wooden rod, which Popat sensed could be a safety hazard. Besides, the low height of the crib did not make it easy to use. He looked for better options in Ahmedabad and found nothing that met global safety standards.

At that time, his job with Sophos involved extensive overseas travel. As a new parent, he was inclined to look for baby items wherever he went and discovered products that were ergonomically designed, emphasised safety and looked good too. While he brought back infant personal care essentials like anti-rash creams and lotions, baby gear such as cribs and cots were too bulky. In Ahmedabad, the only store with high quality, international baby products adhering to credible safety protocols was the now-shuttered Mom & Me. But availability was limited to the American brand Graco and the Italian company Chicco.

“They were expensive with stroller prices ranging from ₹20,000-24,000. I am Gujarati, and I know what fair pricing entails. Even though I could afford them, I refused to shell out money for the extravagant price bloated by the operating costs of those companies. The baby would outgrow it in 2-3 years and the cost didn’t add up,” he says.

Popat sensed a business opportunity to fill the market gap—the unavailability of premium, high-quality baby products secured with international safety measures for a price-sensitive market. It birthed R for Rabbit, a name inspired by his daughter’s favourite toy. “The business idea was seeded after she was born, I wanted the name to have a link with her. Plus, I wanted to trademark it in the international trade directory,” he explains, underscoring the ambition for global expansion.

The business began as a side hustle in 2014, with Popat putting in some money from his savings. The first product was a three-in-one item, Cradle and Crib, that functioned as a cot, crib and playpen.

Kinjal, who has a degree in fashion from NIFD, joined him as co-founder. The Popats were determined to give their products a premium feel and hired a product design company in Ahmedabad. It looked great on paper, and they patented it but when the final model arrived, the hardware and quality were letdowns. This led Popat to China for manufacturing.

“We couldn’t take loans, we didn’t have anything for mortgage guarantee, not even ancestral property. I risked my savings...because we were in building mode,” he shares.

Despite his efforts, there weren’t many takers for the Cradle-and-Crib; it was ahead of its time. They rolled back its production, added strollers, carry cots, mini washing machines and baby walkers. The three-kilo washing machine was another novel concept, introduced for parents who sought convenience while cleaning baby clothes separately. They soon faced a problem: Customers expected after-sales service, but R for Rabbit was not in that segment, and they had to retire the product.

Although there were product failures, R for Rabbit made a modest revenue of ₹8 lakh in the first year, which rose to ₹1.6 crore in year two, followed by ₹3.6 crore in 2016. The incremental growth convinced Popat to quit his job. Around that time, his father-in-law bought a tricycle for Aarna.

“Assembling was a headache with many nuts and bolts along with a complicated manual. We wanted to solve this problem. It should be simple with plug-and-play parts, a straightforward manual to enable anyone to put it together,” he says while narrating the background story of launching a range of ride-ons in 2017. Just before the lockdown in 2020, they stepped into the feeding segment with teethers, milk bottles and nibblers.

They were bootstrapped and Popat took every possible loan. His approach was to make do with debt until the brand reached decent sales figures for fund-raising. Pre-covid, the equity route was quite new, there were not enough venture capital players. “Equity money is the most expensive in the world with high investor expectations, stake holding and multiple caveats. We delayed fund-raising as much as possible, but by 2021 we did an annual turnover of about ₹70 crore, our fundamentals were strong and we wanted to enter a bigger market—diapers. We were competing against global giants like Procter & Gamble’s Pampers and needed big money.” The private equity firm Xponentia Capital Partners came on board that year with a ₹40 crore investment in a Series A round.

Popat was motivated to launch diapers to address a significant pain point. Their target parent groups in the urban, upper middle-class category were getting diapers from the US through friends and family, or buying imported ones at ₹30-40 per piece. In 2022, they introduced the superlight Feather Diapers. They did persistent trials offering sample packets of three diapers for ₹1. It worked in their favour. “Currently, in the premium lifestyle category, we rank No.2 after Pampers Premium,” he claims.

Although premium, their pricing is competitive with the average cost of a stroller at ₹7,000, car seat at ₹9,000 and diapers at ₹20 for one—the three most popular categories in their product basket. Their hardline items—durable, non-fabric gear like strollers, car seats and furniture—are more popular offline through third-party retail partners. The biggest share of traffic comes from tier-1 cities and metros with a revenue of ₹240 crore last financial year as an omnichannel business.

Their toughest challenge arrived in 2023. Most of their raw material is sourced from China and Chinese containers were held up by port congestion. At the same time, the dollar appreciated. R for Rabbit’s freight cost soared ten times, eroding their revenue. “This situation was outside the purview of my vision,” Popat says. It was the worst market to raise funds, but they went for a second round to survive. They got ₹10 crore from Negen capital as Pre Series B, which felt like “oxygen”, in his words. In 2025, they raised ₹240 crore in Series B funding.

The funds have been directed towards setting up a manufacturing unit in Ahmedabad as a deliberate shift away from dependence on China, especially post covid. Their current product basket has around 60 items with 500-plus SKUs run by a lean team of 181 employees. The goal is to expand their FMCG category, which now includes diapers and baby laundry liquid, for repeat buys, instead of one-time purchases like strollers and cots.

Popat’s aim is to build a trust for the brand similar to the bond shared by parents and their paediatrician.

I didn’t ask him how, but if I did, he would have said in his signature style: Step-by-step.

QUICK THREE

How do you recharge?
I go for a swim when things get stressful.

What do you do in your free time?
Read, especially books by Jim Collins.

Comfort food?
Regional dishes from Saurashtra.