Mumbai, India Mar 18th: Laani, a high-performance body and personal care brand on a mission to bring speed, ease, and joy back to everyday personal care routines, today announced the close of a ₹9.1 crore pre-seed funding round. The round was led by V3 Ventures and Saama Capital, with participation from a distinguished group of angels including Arjun Purkayastha (Managing Director, Reckitt), Manish Taneja (Founder and CEO, Purplle), Kunal Bahl (Founder, Snapdeal), and Dr. Aneesh Sheth (Founder, Dr. Sheth’s Skincare), among others.
Laani was founded by Nirja Bhatt, a Harvard Business School MBA graduate (Class of 2024) and Columbia University alumna, who previously co-founded Recove. When Nirja returned to India in 2024 after eight years in the United States, she noticed a striking disconnect: while homegrown innovation in skin and hair care had surged, body and personal care had not kept pace with the increasingly active, fast-moving lives of modern Indian women. Products felt greasy, ineffective, cumbersome, or harsh, especially in India’s hot and humid conditions.
What began as conversations with friends deepened into structured research, culminating in insights gathered from over 500 women across WhatsApp communities, Instagram, and Reddit. The findings confirmed a clear and unmet market gap: high-performance body and personal care, built for Indian skin and climate.
INTRODUCING THE CLEAR DEODORANT STICK
Laani launches with the Clear Deodorant Stick, a product born out of a category that has seen little to no meaningful innovation in over a decade. Unlike traditional roll-ons and aerosols that dominate the category, this stick is designed to glide on dry and clear, leaving no stains, no stickiness, and no residue, while delivering clinically tested odour suppression at source for up to 24 hours.
WHAT THIS FUNDING ENABLES
The pre-seed capital will be deployed across three strategic priorities: brand building to establish Laani’s presence with Indian consumers, continued investment in research and development to deepen formulation expertise, and the expansion of the product portfolio into new personal care categories.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
“At Laani we are on a mission to reinvent personal care through innovative formats and form factors that are as effective as they are effortless. It’s high-performance, highly functional care that matches ambition, and never asks women to slow down.”
Nirja Bhatt, Founder and CEO, Laani “I have been in touch with Nirja since her days at HBS and always found her to be a deep consumer thinker. When she said body care, we were in. This category is brand starved and Laani is coming up with some very cool, new age solutions. Wait for what’s in store.”
Arjun Vaidya, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, V3 Ventures
