Rajat Jadhav, co-founder and CEO of Bold Care talks about the brand giving a humorous twist to de-stigmatise men’s sexual health.

Bold Care ad campaigns starring Ranveer Singh and Johnny Sins didn’t just take the internet by storm but also started a conversation on men’s sexual health and wellness. The brand emerged from co-founder and CEO Rajat Jadhav’s insights from his previous e-pharmacy start-up. Jadhav discovered that there is significant demand for men’s sexual health solutions in the country.

In a chat with Storyboard18, he talks about the brand, the idea that drove them to start the brand, having Ranveer Singh and Johnny Sins on board, working with Tanmay Bhat and Devaiah Bopanna and more.

What inspired you to launch a brand that specifically prioritises men’s sexual health and wellness? Who is your target audience in terms of age and demographics?

Bold Care as an idea came to life from a very unexpected source. Back in 2015, when I was working on an e-pharmacy start-up (which didn’t work out), I was dealing with a lot of customer and purchase data. During that time, I realised that over 35-40 percent of orders and queries were for the men’s sexual health category. This made me realise that there is no go-to solution for men’s sexual health issues, and we need a digital-first solution for end-to-end sexual health management and innovation in this category.

When it comes to our target consumers, we noticed that globally, men face sexual health issues in their late 30s and early 40s, but in the case of Indian men, these issues come as early as 25. Hence, I wanted to create a comprehensive sexual wellness range that would specifically appeal and assist our key demographic – Indian men within the age range of 25-40 in metro, Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities.

How do you think a brand like Bold Care can help break the stigma around men’s sexual health discussions?

For years, male sexual wellness has been a hush-hush topic that people don’t talk about or seek solutions for. Due to misinformation, men often resort to unsafe and unverified solutions like Unani, Japani oils and homoeopathic hacks. That’s where we’re different – we take the objective approach where we provide science-backed solutions that are vigorously tested and help men resolve their issues with comfort, confidence, and discretion. 

With our brand film as well, we’ve tried to take a fun, quirky approach that makes people think and take control of their sexual wellness.

In what ways do you think Bold Care stands out from other brands in the men’s wellness industry, particularly considering your recent campaign featuring Ranveer Singh and Johnny Sins?

As a brand, I think we’re different because of our methodical approach and mission to provide sexual wellness solutions that work. Since the beginning, we’ve had two main objectives – to help men come to terms with their sexual health concerns and provide simple, accessible solutions which are backed by scientific research. And we’ve tried to communicate the same through our brand films, but with a humorous twist to destigmatise men’s sexual health. With our campaign, we’ve emerged as a leader in this category and normalised the issues people struggled to discuss.

Can you elaborate on the decision-making process behind this unique celebrity pairing? How has it helped the brand? Has it just been publicity, or has it reflected on your sales too?

To be honest, it was a very spontaneous idea that one of our co-founders suggested during a brainstorming session. Our co-founder, Ranveer Singh understands how prevalent an issue of men’s sexual wellness is in India and has been working with us behind the scenes for over a year to give us the right direction for our vision. So he was more than happy to become the face of the campaign for us. Johnny was already a big name in India. If somehow, we could show that even he could struggle with these issues, we could actively start a conversation about sexual health and ultimately, break the internet. 

And we did! Within a week of the brand film launch, we saw a 7x increase in our website traffic, 50 percent growth in our cross-channel sales (Amazon, Flipkart and quick-comm platforms like Zepto, Instamart and BlinkIt) and emerged as the #1 sexual wellness brands on major e-comm channels.

Do you have a creative or media agency on board? If yes who? If not, then do you plan to have one soon?

When we decided to make our brand films, our objective was simple. To start a conversation and deliver a much-needed message about men’s sexual health in the most unexpected way. So, it was a given that we’d go to the guys who could make it happen – Tanmay Bhat and Devaiyyah Bopanna. Having seen their work with director Ayyapa KM, we knew that we needed this dynamic duo to translate our vision into a stellar, innovative campaign.