A new crop of home-care start-ups is challenging established FMCG players by betting that Indian consumers are increasingly looking beyond basic cleaning performance towards safer ingredients, specialised products and greater transparency.
Brands such as Beco, Cleevo, Scrubsy and others are expanding across categories including dishwash, laundry, kitchen and surface care, while investors are beginning to see the segment as a larger consumer opportunity.
For Cleevo Founder Mayank Jain, the opportunity lies in making cleaner products accessible without asking consumers to pay a premium. “If you can get cleaner products at a price point where people are already paying, then the market is yours. I mean, there is enough market for you to play around,” Jain said.
Cleevo has expanded into floor, kitchen, bathroom and laundry care, with floor and kitchen cleaners currently its largest categories. Jain said the company grew tenfold between the last and current financial years and is targeting another 7-10x growth as it expands manufacturing capacity and its portfolio.
Koparo founder Simran Khara said the opportunity is being driven by the same shift seen earlier in food and personal care, where consumers began looking more closely at what they use. “If the consumer is wanting cleaner, and better for them, then they will seek it in home care also, it’s just that the supply has not got created right now,” Khara said.
But new brands cannot afford to compromise on the core function of cleaning, she said. “I was very clear that we have to be at par or better on cleaning efficacy. We are a dusty country, we’re a greasy country, we’re a humid country. So any kind of stain removal, dirt removal, grease removal is a must-have.”
Koparo currently has about ₹115 crore in ARR and expects to close the financial year at ₹150 crore. The company is nearly profitable, while dishwash, floor cleaner and detergent are its strongest products. Quick commerce accounts for about 35 per cent of sales, roughly on par with ecommerce.
Beco co-founder Aditya Ruia said consumer behaviour is changing from simply asking whether a product works to questioning what goes into it. “What’s driving adoption is a consumer shift from ‘this works’ to ‘what’s actually in this’. Especially with urban millennials and young parents who are reading ingredient labels for cleaning products the same way they do for food and skincare now,” Ruia said.
He expects clean home-care to move from a niche, premium segment to a mainstream expectation over the next three to five years, driven by category expansion, wider offline distribution and price parity with legacy brands as manufacturing scales.
For investors, the category is becoming more attractive as brands demonstrate repeat purchases and growth, while digital channels have reduced the distribution advantage historically enjoyed by incumbents.
Arjun Vaidya, co-founder of V3 Ventures, which led Scrubsy’s ₹27 crore seed round, said the opportunity lies in the shift towards specialised and branded products. “The opportunity is the shift from unbranded and commoditised to specialised and branded, which is compounding many times faster than the category itself,” Vaidya said.
Quick commerce, he added, has further changed the equation by allowing new brands to reach consumers nationally much faster than traditional distribution would have allowed.
Published on August 20, 2026
