How Perfora Built a Premium Oral Care Brand: Shark Tank Funded Business Strategy

Everyday hygiene (like brushing your teeth) often feels more like a chore rather than self-care. 

The oral care market felt stuck in the 1980s. Colgate dominated with over 50% market share. The product innovation cycle had flatlined. Marketing relied on scare tactics about cavities and germs.

Nobody had figured out how to make brushing your teeth feel like skincare, even though both happened in the same bathroom, often back-to-back. This was a cultural gap.

Here is exactly where the founders of Perfora saw a $1.1 billion opportunity. 

They have been featured on Shark Tank, secured funding from multiple ventures, and are creating a bridge between mundane routine and personal care.

Here’s everything you need to know about the startup Perfora at a glance:

Let’s look at their start-up journey!

About the Founders:

Jatan Bawa and Tushar Khurana met on the Jagriti Yatra, a train journey program that brings together young Indians interested in entrepreneurship, back in 2016. They knew they wanted to start something together. What they didn't know was what.

They created a checklist of criteria for evaluating categories. The winning sector needed to check four boxes (source):

1. Products used every single day. 

2. A category that hadn't seen meaningful innovation in years. 

3. No new brands speaking to young, modern consumers.

4. A broken end-to-end experience. 

Oral care emerged as the clear winner. 

The duo conducted over 400 consumer interviews. They discovered that Indians viewed electric toothbrushes as bulky, difficult to travel with, and annoying to charge. Existing oral care packaging looked clinical and sterile. The marketing felt preachy and fear-based. 

Going Design-First:

Perfora launched in 2021 with a single product: an electric toothbrush they called "Truthbrush." The name itself signaled their positioning. 

Instead of bulky rechargeable units, Perfora created a sleek battery-operated design. It addressed the travel and charging friction of consumers. Moreover, the colour palette catered to a social media savvy audience. 

They also offered personalization where customers could add any name or quote. This created ownership in a product category defined by its disposability.

The brand identity positioned Perfora as the anti-legacy-brand. Where traditional brands used fear-based marketing, Perfora used aspiration.

The Content Strategy

D2C brands seem to have a predictable playbook: influencer seeding, Facebook ads, discount-heavy customer acquisition. Perfora did some of that. But they also did something unusual. 

They launched a Sunday newsletter about building the company - long-form storytelling about the founder journey, the challenges, learnings, and the human aspects of building a company.

Young Indian consumers were obsessed with entrepreneurship (that’s probably what brings you to read this!) They wanted to feel like insiders in the building process. The newsletter created that intimacy at scale.

On Instagram, Perfora rejected the polished aesthetic of traditional FMCG advertising. Early ads were literally made on Canva by the founders. They looked rough. This DIY ad outperformed professionally produced content significantly.

The brand leaned into realness over perfection. 

They created an Instagram series called "Unfiltered with Perfora" featuring creators talking about their thoughts while brushing.

It was weird. It was memorable. It gave the brand a voice distinct from clinical oral care messaging.

Every piece asked a simple question: Will this resonate with our audience, and will it offer a clear takeaway? This editorial sensibility separated Perfora from brands who often post on social media “just for presence”.

The Shark Tank Surge & Financials

February 2023 changed Perfora's trajectory permanently. The brand appeared on Shark Tank India Season 2. 

They secured ₹80 lakhs from 3 sharks - Peyush Bansal, Namita Thapar, and Vineeta Singh. The deal closed with a condition that this would be part of a larger funding round.

But the deal itself wasn't the transformation. The exposure was. Traffic spiked 8 times overnight. Revenue jumped 3.5 times in the following months. 

The Sharks gave Perfora mass market validation and credibility. 

What made the appearance work was strategic timing. Perfora had entered quick commerce platforms like Blinkit and Swiggy Instamart a few months before the episode aired. 

The brand’s revenue from quick commerce surged from 5-6% initially to 20-25% post Shark Tank! 

Here is Perfora’s funding journey.

The brand has been invested in by investors such as Sauce, RPSG Capital Ventures, and Shiprocket.

Despite impressive topline growth, Perfora's losses expanded significantly as they scaled.  The company lost ₹10.6 crores in FY24, up from ₹5 crores the previous year. 

In unit economics, they spent ₹1.28 for every rupee in revenue. The brand was spending heavily on marketing, team expansion, and inventory to meet surging demand.

Conclusion:

Perfora's hockey stick trajectory raises the question: what sustains growth after the surge? The transition from insurgent to category leader hinges on a few critical bets.

First is portfolio depth. Having expanded from electric toothbrushes into 35+ SKUs, Perfora must keep winning new use cases - sensitivity, whitening, gum care, and kids - to drive frequency, not just trials.

Second is margin durability. Long-term economics will depend on shifting emphasis from one-time durables to repeat consumables and building retention through subscriptions.

Third is the offline scale without margin erosion. Retail brings reach and legitimacy but only works if D2C remains the profit engine or shelf presence commands a premium.

The market will test Perfora hard, but one truth stands: it proved that redefining meaning in a commodity can open an outsized opportunity.