In conversation with Vikas Bagaria, Founder, Pee Safe

By the morning of March 3, 2020, there were 40,000 orders on our own website and another 50,000 came in from Amazon.

Impact of the pandemic

Pee Safe is India’s leading hygiene and wellness brand and we saw an incredible jump in our sales during the pandemic. By the morning of March 3, 2020, there were 40,000 orders on our own website and another 50,000 came in from Amazon. However, we also faced a tremendous shortage of personnel in terms of packaging and handling this large volume. We shut down our website and hired 60 daily wage laborers and all hands from our office including the product design team to the receptionist reached the warehouse to help with packaging. Despite this, we had to decline about half of the orders from Amazon, not due to lack of stocks, but, because there were not enough human resources to fulfil them all. We next opened our online platform on March 12, 2020 and within the first hour itself, there were 500 orders. Considering that we received no more than 5000 to 6000 orders in a given month before the pandemic, this was truly a massive surge.

Impact on the future plans because of COVID

The impact of the pandemic is not as severe now as it was at the peak of the outbreak. However, there are still repeat waves and new strains of the virus are being discovered. Things such as hand sanitizers, face masks and surface disinfectants are now an essential part of our lives. Consequently, their consumption as well as demand will keep rising even in 2021 and the years ahead. From a company perspective, our future plans will definitely be focused around this increase in demand and even when the pandemic subsides, the sales are steadily going to be at about 5-6 on a scale of 10 in the years ahead.

Changes in consumer behaviour and new products planned

We have seen the personal hygiene awareness and demand for products such as disinfectant sprays, surface disinfectants and hand sanitizers grow tremendously during the ongoing pandemic. The risk of such viral infections is going to be constantly present in the foreseeable future, and we anticipate the demand to further grow. The market is expanding and is expected to cross the $2 billion mark by 2025. We are planning to expand our market reach through online and offline channels and introduce new hygiene products in the future as well. There are also detailed plans to run intensive hygiene awareness campaigns on a pan India level. We wish to ensure that personal hygiene and sanitation products are available in every part of the country and people don’t need to risk facing health problems due to lack of products or awareness.