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IMBesharam, one of the leading online adult stores in India, is set to open up the sexual wellness category with collaborations and strategic investments in emerging startups. As a first move, homegrown sex-tech startup Sangya Project has received seed funding from IMBesharam, to manufacture pleasure products in India.

Talking about the development, in an exclusive chat with Storyboard18, Raj Armani, co-founder of IMBesharam, says, currently there is no mega leader in the pleasure category. He adds, “We think for the category to get its credibility, legitimacy and place in the sun, responsible businesses need to come together. I believe working as a community will only benefit everyone. Four years ago, when we had to raise funds for IMBesharam, it was a difficult pitch. Investors in the West, who had the money, didn’t understand the Indian consumers. Whereas Indian investors didn’t understand the category needs. Today, we are in a position to invest in game-changing businesses who understand the pulse of the consumers.”

IMBesharam is committed to $2 million for acquisitions. This is apart from their investments in Sangya Project. Armani hints there could be possibly two more investments later this year.

Currently, Sangya Project is the only brand to manufacture sex toys in India. This includes the Sangya S6 Strap, the Omega Series of butt plugs, the S6 Dildo, and more. Founded by Shweta Sangtani, Aashish Mehrotra, and Tanisha RK, a queer and poly family in 2020, Sangya Project started as a digital platform for educational content and personal stories around sex, sexuality, relationships, cyber safety, and mental health, and ventured into the pleasure industry a year later.

Phata poster nikhla hero moment

Armani says Sangya Project’s brand purpose impressed him the most. “I was closely following what Sangya Project were talking about and sharing on social media since their inception. The content they were contributing added more layers to the ecosystem. That’s something the category needs right now,” he adds. For instance, Sangya Project talks about queer experiences, polyamorous relationships and stories from survivors of trauma. 

IMBesharam’s investment in Sangya Project is also aimed at making sexual wellness products more affordable across the country and pushing for far and wide accessibility of sex education and sexual awareness beyond metros. 

However, the journey for both IMBesharam and Sangya Project hasn’t been easy.

The founders of Sangya Project tell Storyboard18, that it took about six months to convince a manufacturer in India to make their products. “Every time we met a manufacturer, they would get scandalous. They were worried about what people on the floor, especially women, would think about the products. When they made them aware that it’s a legit business, only then they understood the business model, and its potential results,” share the founders.

Payment gateways also gave players IMBesharam, Sangya Project, and many others in the business grief. Transactions wouldn’t go through in the initial days for these companies because the payment gateways would red flag. Mainly because they didn’t understand what they were really selling. With many conversations at large industry forums, things are getting streamlined in the category.

Armani believes the change is positive, especially in a conservative market like India, because the right kind of entrepreneurs are revolutionising the sector. “We are witnessing India’s phata poster nikhla hero moment. Everyone in the space wants to normalise the idea of pleasure and democratise sex. Each one of us want to remove the sound of vulgarity that’s associated with the word sex,” he adds.

The growth drivers

According to Armani, a business becomes a brand only when consumers identify and trust it. He observes the number of brands emerging in the category is an indicator that there is acceptance and demand for pleasure products. According to industry reports, the India sexual wellness market size was valued at $1,153.5 million in 2020, and is estimated to reach $2,095.4 million by 2030, registering a CAGR of 5.8% from 2021 to 2030. Pleasure products are only close to 5% of this market.

New-age businesses are trying to change this graph. Interestingly, startups like GetIntimacy, Bleu Condoms, Sassiest, Salad, That Sassy Thing, and a few others in the space are led by women. Armani is optimistic that these founders in a few years will be the poster women who shape the growth map of the category and change consumer perceptions. “Honestly, in my lifetime, I don’t think there is going to be any competition in the sector. There is going to be enough room for everyone to explore, innovate, and grow,” says Armani.

In order to expand further, IMBesharam is planning to list on online marketplaces too. Currently, the products of the brand are also on Snapdeal. 30-35% of IMBesharam’s sales come from tier II cities. 54% buyers are women and 46% are men. Chandigarh, Goa, Cochin, Surat, and Bhopal are a few cities that are projecting positive growth for IMBesharam. However, sales-wise Mumbai, Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad, and Pune, continue to be the top drivers. The company is estimated to cross Rs 40 crore in sales by 2023.

Playing smart with algorithms

While brands in the sexual wellness category are changing the way business is done, they are constantly experimenting with ways to promote themselves. Sangya Project is crafting different notes on their social pages. The founders believe there is still a demand for long-format content. From posting Instagram posts with over 1000 words, story contributions from users, to releasing podcasts and graphic novels are all in the pipeline for Sangya Project to hit the sweet spot. “We don’t want to make ‘viral’ content and we also don’t want to be a content machine,” say the founders.

The biggest challenge for all the players in the sexual wellness category is that they often get shadow banned by social media platforms. 

Brands cannot use the word sex multiple times in a post, they also cannot post pictures of their products, and if a user reports them then they need to be extra careful. “Let’s do Meta,” does not work for brands that sell anything related to sexual wellness.

Recently, one of Armani’s LinkedIn posts was pulled down. It was a sales milestone post with a photo of sex toys from his platform but LinkedIn took it down stating it goes against its content guidelines. 

When asked how his team and he navigate through these challenges, Armani says, “You just need to become smarter than the algorithms. You need to soften the edges if need be. Over time, when enough voices get together, we can fight for the revalidation of the guidelines. It’s a change that’s critical for the growth of our businesses and to build a sex-positive society.”

The writer was in Bangkok to attend IMBesharam's annual conference at the invitation of the company.

Is it sextech brand IMBesharam's phata-poster-nikla-hero moment?

“We were ignored, then we were ostracized, later we were heard and over a period of time we were accepted,” says Raj Armani, co-founder of IMBesharam, India’s first and biggest sextech brand. 

From a consignment worth Rs 3 crore getting confiscated by Customs to payment gateways cancelling their account for being ‘obscene’, IMBesharam has fought many battles. As the brand completes nine years in the business of sexual wellness, Armani and his team are looking at interesting ways to on-board social media marketing executives, brand managers, designers and a host of other roles. 

In an exclusive interview with Storyboard18, Armani, talks about the company's unique hiring campaign, challenges of hiring in the sextech space and how that’s changing, and the brand’s rocky journey in a market where ‘sex’ is typically a taboo topic. 
 
Read on. 

What is the core idea behind the hiring campaign you announced on LinkedIn? And what’s the response so far? 

This was a totally spontaneous decision as we were finalizing our team’s yearly international holiday. We skipped holidays for the last two years due to COVID interruptions and restrictions, so this year the team holiday is a much awaited event.

The response has been actually overwhelming. We got 120 candidates to fill applications that’s posted on our job listing after reading this post and it will take our team 1-2 weeks to narrow down 10 best and interview them. The three who standout will get an invitation to the office trip to Bangkok. We think this is a fun and unique way to start a work relationship, they will get a premium team culture experience which can form the foundation on which they will hopefully build up on.

Is hiring difficult in the category you operate in?

Yes and no. Yes, because lately startups’ model has been the ‘in’ thing, lots of new aspirants want to jump on. Even the well-seasoned work force seems to be attracted to the concept of working in a team as an independent entrepreneur vs the traditional manager/supervisor/employee model. So we get several inquiries from experienced candidates in various industries who want to join our team. In fact many of them approach us thinking they would get hired and get a VIP ticket to Besharam mansion. Those hopes don’t last too long as our application forms bring a reality check and that filters the just curious from the seriously serious.

The reason why we say no, is because we have a hard time finding new team mates who have similar work ethics as the majority of our team. We find many of the candidates who apply lack communication skills, organizational skills, time management skills and various other non-negotiable expectations we have from a high quality professional. A few of them who do, are either overqualified for the position or too expensive for us to make an offer to. 

What are the hiring challenges you face, especially for your marketing team?

Our challenges have evolved over years. From the usual and expected ‘log kya kahenge’ between 2013-16 to ‘Hi I am Sonia and I wanna work in a sextech startup’, the journey has been like a tour of Indian culture in a saas-bahu soap. Now we get the upper hand and can choose the best candidate from the pool because suddenly working in a startup is cool and sexual wellness is no more taboo.

What are the questions you usually ask candidates?

Some of the questions we ask are 'how will you react if your parents/in-laws find out about our company?' ‘What will you tell your husband if he passes and sees the screen on your laptop’? ‘Will your relationship get affected if you work in our team?' ‘Have you visited an adult store outside of India?' And the one question that most new talent asks us is ‘will we get to meet Sunny Leone at your office?’ or ‘Can we talk to her after being hired’? Well it’s cruel to burst that bubble but we do get a few laughs out of it here and there. Once a smart chap who took a role in marketing said that us hiring him is a ticket to move out from his home and start a living with his girlfriend, so he can tell his parents ‘shifting due to job’. 

As a brand that opened up the category 10 years ago, what’s your view on India? What were the initial roadblocks?

Now is the golden period to be in sextech in India. India is the only country in the world with the most dormant demand. It is the third-biggest consumer of porn, second-most populated country, with a new age population of GenZ and shifting mindsets of millennials, the demand is soon going to blow up. It’s just a matter of time when the attention of every brand and service that’s catering to sexual health and sexual wellness will divert to India.

When we started, we had the burden to introduce this category as a credible and legit category where audience understand that pleasure and sex toys are not a shady underground phenomemnon to play around in bachelor parties or make jokes about. It is an experience that gives the biggest high without having to snort, sniff or drink and it’s as organic as your hunger for different cuisines and your wanderlust for different locations. Then our focus shifted on discovery and fighting taboos, on social media and society at large.

We were ignored, then we were ostracized, later we were heard and over a period of time we were accepted. In the middle we had several highs and lows, like getting a large consignment of over Rs 3 crore confiscated by Customs in Mumbai to being pitched on the front page of a newspaper against the police commissioner who allegedly wanted to clean Mumbai of this ‘crap’. We were celebrated for what we did and at the same we had payment gateways cancel our accounts because ‘this is obscene and not allowed in India’. We have seen it all and are still alive and kicking.

But marketing sex toys, sexual wellness products and other related items is still challenging in India. What’s your brand’s strategy? What has helped you so far? 

That’s true. The best practices to marketing in India are changing as audiences' taste, knowledge and expectations are evolving. For example, look what Ranveer Singh's nude photos did recently and think back to what Aamir Khan and Karishma Kapoor did in the 90s when they kissed in the rain. 

The best ideas usually excite viewers’ minds and engage their intelligence. So we are trying to learn this one step at a time and hopefully we will master it soon. Our brand's strategy since 2018 has transitioned to 80 percent telling and 20 percent selling, across social media as well in press and offline media. We have realigned our vision with a single focus which is to ‘normalize (sexual) pleasure’ and remove the stigma. So since 2018 our focus has been to source and impart real-life sex-ed, share stories, open conversations and fuel discussions. We have not ventured outside of social media but we plan to do that aggressively for Q3-4 2022 between ads on social media, search ads, video marketing on OTT channels, engaging influencers and channels who can advance our agenda and join hands in our effort to normalize pleasure. The name of the campaign we are coming up with next is ‘Don’t have SEX’…Guess why?

What’s the growth you are expecting by the end of the year? What’s your marketing spend like?

2020 was a turning point in our business as well as the industry at large. It’s the year that saw sales tank to 5 percent and then skyrocket to 200 percent on previous year numbers. We only realized the true potential after this eye-opening phase and since then have doubled down to establish Besharam as a one stop shop. Our revenues were upwards of Rs40 crore for 2021 and we are on pace to beat that by 25 percent this year. It may go higher as we have a bunch of events and activities lined up for the remainder of this year. Our marketing spend may be the highest ever, crossing Rs 2 crore this year.

What are some of the bigger consumer trends you are noticing in India that are surprising and promising? 

We notice that online shopping is shaping consumer behaviour, habits and expectations so fast that in a few years we will use an app to flush the toilet, cook your food or put you to sleep. So why not lovemaking or sex? We are seeing early adoption of VR headsets, smart toys that can make lovemaking possible using apps and at a distance, bluetooth and airdrop dating based on your location, and possibly e-weddings and suhaag raats. The possibilities are endless.

RAJ ARMANI