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In the autumn of 2016, while planning to a buy a new apartment, our co-founder, Prodyut Bora, asked his wife: “what is the most important thing you would like in our new home?” Pat came the reply: “the cleanest air.”
Prodyut Bora spent the next three months studying air pollution. He soon found out that the air found in most of the cities is oxygen deficient. With decreasing green cover and increasing automobile density, the level of oxygen in the outdoor air is gradually decreasing. Each litre of fuel in vehicles are burning around 2000 litres of oxygen. The ideal level of oxygen in the atmosphere is 21%. However, in cities like Delhi, the oxygen level found in the outdoor air is 17-18%. In other words, oxygen availability is 30% less than the ideal level.
That winter, Prodyut Bora met our other co-founder Narendra Bisht. Narendra came up with a unique oxygen machine prototype that would provide clean air to the new apartment. Both hit off well, one thing led to another. In March 2017, Narendra Bisht invited Prodyut Bora, to join his decade-old medical equipment business as a partner.
They also coined a new corporate name for the business: Bonphul. It is an East Indian (Assamese) word meaning ‘wildflower’.
While the older corporate entity (Bonphul Medsys) was retained, on 19 July 2017, the incorporation of Bonphul Air Products happened. The new entity Bonphul Air Products would get into the business of indoor air quality (IAQ). About the same time, Anish Aneja, an industrial product designer, joined as the first new hire.
For the next five months, the trio worked on perfecting the prototype that was initially developed. While doing so, they realised that they were creating an entirely new category in indoor air quality. Only one other company in the world—Oxus, South Korea—had a similar product. Therefore, they coined a new category name—Oxygen Optimizer—and a new product brand name—OxyMax—for their further development.
While all this was going on, in October 2017, Faridabad-based fabricator Satish Bhatia came on board as the seed investor.
The first few months of 2018 saw a trickle of sales with only word-of-mouth product promotion. As the trio began to look for an angel investor to scale up the company, they met Atul Gupta in May 2018, who signed up to fund the next phase of growth.
In June 2018, Bonphul Air Products shifted its corporate office from Patparganj in East Delhi to Gurgaon. Armed with the funds from its angel investors, team expansion of Bonphul began.
On 19 July 2018, everybody got together to celebrate the company’s first anniversary, and articulate a new vision: to be the ‘World’s Most Comprehensive Indoor Air Quality Company’ by December 2018.
But 3 years into the business, we realized that things were just not happening. We tried everything that one could think of–distribution network, digital marketing, you name it–but nothing seemed to matter; the sales graph refused to budge. We were on the brink of collapse!
So what happened? Today, in retrospect, we realized that we while we factored in most variables, the missing X factor was consumer behaviour.
Otherwise, how would you explain the logic of Indians spending up to 10 thousand rupees on servicing their cars, but thinking a hundred times before spending 2 thousand rupees on a preventive personal-health check? Worldwide, the preventive-healthcare market is massive, in India it is barely a blip.
Just think: while most of us are aware of air quality issues, how many of us actually went out to buy an air quality device? Or even enquired about one!
Fortunately for us, in April 2021 we used our expertise in oxygen to get into medical-oxygen. We created OxyMan 50: the world’s most compact, most affordable, medical-oxygen generator. Today, OxyMan 50 runs at Apollo Hospital, Delhi; Apollo Hospital, Hyderabad; Artemis Hospital, Gurgaon; Cantonment Hospital, Agra; etc.
This pivoting worked! Suddenly business took off!
We have wiped off our past losses, and are now solidly profitable. We have a new office, a new factory, a new team. And yes, a new beginning! This is Bonphul 2.0
