Karthick Solai KS, Arjun T, and Harrish Kandan — alumni of Loyola College, Chennai — had dreams of making big money. They then wanted to start a business together that could help them earn millions of dollars in the future.
However, during the tragic Chennai floods in 2015, things changed for the friends. People lost their homes, and many were completely flooded.
They were among many who were on the ground helping others. While helping clean the city, they saw a whole load of waste — single-use plastic bags, plastic bottles and cups, and most importantly, toothbrushes.
The friends decided to tackle this problem through their venture Terrabrush, now called Terra which they started in 2018. To begin with, they started selling bamboo toothbrushes. The Chennai-headquartered startup has 24 employees in its team.
“We started with Bamboo toothbrushes, but with time, we moved into tongue cleaners, tooth powder, toothpaste, and others, like combs, bags, copper bottles, etc.,” says Harrish.
He adds the startup uses purely paper packaging and does not include even a bit of plastic to deliver its products. Meanwhile, it ships products like toothpaste and tooth powder in glass jars.
Most of the oral care products cost about Rs 299 each. Combo products — a pack of four toothbrushes, activated charcoal powder, copper tongue cleaner, or herbal toothpaste, and others come at discounted rates.
Under the personal and home care categories, Terra sells products, including combs, copper bottles, loofahs, wooden cotton swabs, reusable metal straws, cotton bags, aprons, etc.
The toothbrushes are sold through the website and over 300 retail stores in Bengaluru and e-commerce platform Amazon. Arjun shares that the revenue obtained on the website and through Amazon account for the majority of the sales compared to the offline sales.
“We sell around one to two lakhs brushes every quarter. So the revenue for each quarter comes up to about Rs 50 lakh,” Terra CFO Arjun shares.
In terms of investment, the startup is completely bootstrapped with the amount the trio’s parents had saved for their higher education. It plans to raise a seed round by the end of 2021.