Founder and CEO Kunal Popat on building a complete baby and kids brand, expanding into consumables, strengthening manufacturing and reaching more Tier 2 and Tier 3 consumers
R for Rabbit is expanding beyond its established baby gear portfolio as it looks to build a broader baby and kids brand spanning everyday products from infancy through childhood. In a conversation with BW Retail World, Kunal Popat, Founder & CEO, R for Rabbit, discusses the company’s growth ambitions, category expansion, omnichannel strategy, product innovation and the growing role of Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets. He also explains the thinking behind the brand’s new biomimicry-based personal care range and why R for Rabbit is prioritising growth while maintaining a focus on financial sustainability.
R for Rabbit has grown significantly in recent years. What is the growth target you are looking at, and what will drive it?
The FY26 numbers are under audit, so it will be difficult for me to comment on the exact closing number. But in terms of growth percentage, we will be growing close to 40 per cent compared with the previous year.
The biggest driver is that R for Rabbit as a brand is getting accepted across all the different categories that we are in. If I talk about specific categories where we are seeing huge growth, diapers have been one of the key drivers, along with feeding, nursing and furniture.
Compared with baby gear and ride-ons, where we have been present since inception, customers are now becoming more sticky and developing greater trust in the brand. They are therefore accepting the new categories that we are launching. Our existing customer base is the main reason for our growth because our LTV is increasing with them.
What is R for Rabbit’s current market position in categories such as strollers, car seats and high chairs?
There is no agency in India at the moment that really focuses on market share for these particular hard-line categories in the baby segment.
If I tell you the estimates, I can say that we are in the top three. Obviously, the target is to move up the ladder. If we are in the top three today, then in some categories we are in the top two and in some we are in the top three.
If you break, dice and slice the hard-line categories, it depends on where we are. In strollers, we might be in the top two; car seats might be in the top two; and high chairs might be in the top three.
In any hard-line category that we enter, our aim is to be among the top three brands recognised by customers in their buying decisions, both in terms of consideration and sales. This has always been the target, and we have achieved it over the many years that we have been in hard lines.
You have built a sizeable offline network alongside your D2C and marketplace businesses. What does the current channel mix look like?
If we break it between online and offline, it is 60:40. Sixty per cent is online, which includes D2C and marketplaces, and 40 per cent is offline, which includes general trade and modern trade stores.
With more than 3,000 offline channel partners and a customer base of over five million parents, what is the next phase of your distribution strategy? Are you looking at exclusive stores, deeper Tier 2 and Tier 3 penetration or international markets?
With the new range that we are launching, we are moving beyond hard lines. We were into hard lines and then we got into diapers. Diapers are accepted by top-tier customers across all cities. You may see a stroller in Ludhiana or a Tier 3 city, but adoption of products such as high chairs, strollers and car seats is still relatively lower in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities.
But everyone wants diapers, and there is money there. I would say Tier 2 and Tier 3 consumers are more aspirational than even Tier 1 consumers. They are the growth drivers for our new categories and products such as diapers.
Since we have also entered the kids’ personal care range, we expect our penetration to increase in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities with the more consumable categories that we are entering.
Tell us more about the new personal care range and the idea behind it.
Last week, we launched the world’s first biomimic series of kids’ personal care products based on biomimicry. What we saw was that there are so many brands where every other brand claims to be natural. They talk about natural aloe vera, natural cucumber, shea butter and so on.
But if you go and read the formulation, we found that there was hardly anything that was actually present in meaningful quantities as a natural ingredient. For example, cucumber could be the last ingredient. What is the composition of that cucumber product or cucumber in the shampoo? It could be 0.1 per cent. It is just for the sake of saying that it is natural.
When we started analysing everything, we found that it has to be an active content or active ingredient in the product. So we couldn’t convince ourselves to launch a natural series. We felt that it was not the right thing to do.
We were internally discussing how we should enter this category. Then we came up with an idea: let’s understand how nature works and try to imitate how nature has created us or how nature protects us.
Based on science, we create formulations that mimic nature. That’s how the biomimicry principle was developed. Every ingredient or every product is inspired by something from nature’s creation.
For example, the shampoo is inspired by sebum. There is natural sebum in our hair that keeps it oily. We understood how it works, what its composition is and how it contributes to hair health and cleaning. Based on that, we created a scientific formulation that mimics sebum. Rather than simply talking about nature, we learned from nature and created a formulation that is similar to what nature does.
How have you approached safety and testing for these products?
The first philosophy of R for Rabbit is ‘safety first’. We don’t launch products without understanding them thoroughly. We get inside everything — what is used in the product, how it is made and what chemicals are used.
When we started looking at formulations, we didn’t want to stop at claims such as ‘paediatrician tested’ or ‘no parabens’. We looked much deeper into what should not be present in the formulation.
Because we are into kids and babies, and because our brand is highly trusted among parents, we wanted to make sure that we gave them the best product. For every product, we tested it almost like a medicine is launched.
We hired a clinical research company to test our formulations on babies and children. Once the formulation was ready and the clinical trials were completed, we launched it.
How are you building consumer trust around these claims?
A lot of consumers ask us, ‘Is it true or not? Because everyone says it.’ So, what we did was put a barcode on every product. On our website, we created a dedicated link and published the clinical trial reports, clinical certifications and laboratory test reports.
Whatever we are saying is backed by some of the best laboratories in the country. We also chose clinical research companies used by major pharmaceutical companies. We wanted to ensure that whatever we are doing and this concept of biomimicry are backed by evidence.
The trust has to be built with consumers, and one way of building that trust is by telling them what is really used in the product.
As the brand grows, what is your priority — stronger margins or faster growth?
We are in the growth phase, so obviously growth is slightly more of a priority than the bottom line. But, like any other startup, we are not burning money. We are balancing growth with sustainability and profits.
We may not be that profitable, but that doesn’t mean that we are burning money and pursuing growth at any cost. We are a very balanced company, and that has been our DNA from day one.
You recently raised fresh capital to accelerate omnichannel expansion and product innovation. How will the capital be deployed, and what should investors and consumers expect over the next 24 months?
Defining the percentage allocation of the money will be very difficult for me to tell. But the major investment is going back into the integration and backward integration of the supply chain, which means manufacturing.
The second area is new category launches. You have seen one category launch from our end, and you will see more category launches in the future.
The third is product innovation. We are constantly working to innovate the designs of our products.
Obviously, when we launch new categories, we have to invest in marketing. That comes by default with the launch of a category. And penetration also comes with it because we have to grow sales, get into more channels and reach more cities. Those are the natural requirements that come with a new growth target.
Where do you see R for Rabbit two years from now?
Two years from now, I would say we would be a complete baby and kids brand with everything a mother can think of for her baby and kids. Our customer lifetime value is from zero to seven years — or zero to nine years, because now we are getting into the kids’ brand as well.
With the biomimicry launch, we are entering the kids’ segment. So, for baby and kids, apart from food, I would say anything that is needed for the upbringing of babies and kids — products that are used daily — we want to provide.
We want to build a brand that a parent can blindly trust in real life.
