Indore Firm Cashes In On OnePlus Name To Build Trimmer Brand
The label is now the third-largest trimmer brand online and ranks among the top ten overall in India, with an estimated 3–4% market share.
India’s grooming market has thrown up an unusual success story, one that underscores both the scale of opportunity and the quirks of doing business in the country.
According to a LinkedIn post by Varun Gupta of Bombay Shaving Company, trimmers branded “OnePlus” have rapidly climbed the charts on e-commerce platforms.
In his post, Gupta noted that the label is now the third-largest trimmer brand online and ranks among the top ten overall in India, with an estimated 3–4% market share. “One out of 25 trimmers sold in India typically are OnePlus,” he estimated.
The twist: the multinational smartphone maker OnePlus has nothing to do with it.
Instead, the products come from a company headquartered in Indore’s cloth market, which seemingly spotted a gap in trademark registration within the grooming category and built a sizeable business around it.
As Gupta puts it, the dynamic is stark: “The Chinese giant puts people into the funnel," using the marketing term used to describe people at various stages of awareness about a product or brand. "The Indori businessman harvests them at the bottom.”
The episode highlights both the opportunities and legal grey zones that consumer brands face in India, which, Gupta lightly notes, “is not for beginners.”
