Addressing female well-being is a profound endeavor. Across the ages, brands have shifted their focus to prioritize women’s emotions in their various brand communications. Revaa, a newly launched D2C women’s hygiene brand, centers its mission around holistic wellness. The brand’s ethos surrounds women’s mood and hygiene, as their tagline mentions “Swing your mood swings and be period positive with Revaa”.
Revaa emphasizes the commitment to fostering awareness, dismantling taboos, and promoting wellness through a diverse range of product categories. “One of the products that I like to talk about is Pad Pouches. It can carry your period essentials in a stylish and quirky way.” Elaborating about the product line-up, Mahipal Singh adds.
In a one-on-one interaction, MI speaks with Mahipal Singh, CEO and Founder of Revaa. Singh talks about its inception, product line, and awareness programs.
Excerpts here:
Q) Tell us about the idea behind Revaa.
Mahipal: The story goes back to the first time my daughter got her periods. The year 2020, when the pandemic was being cruel to all of us, her mother tested positive for COVID and had to practice isolation. Being the sole guardian at the time, I had to make this easy for our daughter. I decided to create something around menstruation and women dealing with several issues attached to it. I have seen my loved ones in menstruating pain, the myths and taboos that many women carry on their shoulders all their lives. So I wanted to create something that creates awareness and talks about everything around menstruation.
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In a research, we found that only 35% of women have access to a hygienic menstrual product in India. My concern was the other 65% that were lacking the basic necessities. After a few more research, we found out that the basic awareness around menstruation is missing.
This is when we created Reeva to foster awareness, break taboos, and embrace wellness. We have an array of products right from day one to day five of the periods. We identified the mood swings, digestion issues, menstruating pains, anxiety, and many more problems that women suffers during this time of the month. We have oils for pain, anxious sleep, and mood swings that can help women. We developed plenty of products for skin and overall wellness concentrated on women’s health.
Q) Are you saying the previous brands were not doing enough for awareness?
Mahipal: The brands are doing their bit but generally, businesses follow certain courses and need to be focussed around it. However, we are approaching it by creating awareness across age groups. We are engaging with schools and creating awareness by talking to young girls about menstruation. It is particularly done by conducting sessions and talking about the subject interactively.
Q) How are your products different?
Mahipal: We are creating a differentiator by introducing a range of reusable sanitary pads, liners, and period panties. These panties come with some added fashion of colours and prints, available in six different sizes to cover the larger part of women’s body types. These reusable leak-proof panties have a minimum absorption of 100ml. However, as per research, a woman during each menstrual cycle releases approximately 12 to 15 ml of fluid. So, our products are eco-conscious and are good up to 100 washes. Also, economy-wise, a reusable pad is one-tenth of the cost of a disposable pad.
A few years back, when girls were using unhygienic cloth, disposable pads were a real game-changer. We don’t think disposable pads are bad or unhygienic. It works wonderfully for a large part of the community. But today, we have to think about the environment too.
Q) What are the steps you are adopting for brand awareness?
Mahipal: We have been conducting a lot of pop-ups and getting our word out into the market. We try to get people to use our brand and then give us feedback. We are reaching out to tier 1 and 2 cities to educate them to take up this initiative and be the first to try out a reusable pad.
For awareness programs, we initially started with Delhi and NCR, where we were engaging with schools (both private and public). We talked with boys and girls and also invited either one of the parents to attend these conversations. In these sessions, we encourage girls to share their experiences, so other kids could learn from the stories. We are planning to move to other parts of the country in the coming months.
Q) What is the price per packet?
Mahipal: Our reusable pads come in two variants – INR 475 for a pack of four and INR 465 for a pack of four. We’ve chosen to keep a pack of four because one can always get a piece handy while other pieces are might be up for wash or dryer.
Q) The website is quite intriguing to engage Genz and millennials. What kind of business do you unleash from the platform online?
Mahipal: We have kept the website informative and intriguing, so people could hook into it. Whenever people drop into our website (www.reevaforyou.com), they can have a takeaway in the form of knowledge about menstruation and women’s wellness. We have curated the sections under the shop menu, with menstrual magic wellness wonders and fashion fusion. It finely covers a menstruation cycle for women, from when the mood swings happen before periods and then after the cycle. We have created a fun, loving product range that can cater to a 10-year-old and also a 35-year-old.
We launched 2 months back and have been able to cater to 5000 customers. So it’s about creating a very inclusive and comfortable environment through our products.
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Q) What about your offline footprints?
Mahipal: We are engaging with various offline distributors to get into the offline market. It’s still at a nascent stage but we’re moving towards developing this as an equivalent part of our online lives.
Q) Tell us more about the competition in the market. How are you planning to procure the space?
Mahipal: The way we want to approach this is by building conversations with women around wellbeing and moods. As I mentioned earlier, only 35% of women have access to hygienic pads. So we want to engage with those other 65% Indians who don’t even have hygienic means. We want to step up into that segment. We want to reinforce positivity around menstruation. As our tagline says- swing your mood swings and be period-positive with Revaa.
