Hyderabad like many other cities in India has ground water that is very Hard. Because of Hard water, one of the founders, Uday Nadiwade who had recently purchased a new house saw his Bathroom Fittings like Taps, Tiles, Utensils all getting calcified and becoming difficult to operate. He came across his friend and cofounder Rajesh Saraf who had installed an expensive Softener plant in his house around 2 years back. Rajesh stopped using his plant in a year’s time, as it needed lots of maintenance and regular regeneration.
Uday who comes from Product Development background and Rajesh from Sales and Marketing started working on a solution keeping in view the market requirements. They wanted to design and sell products that are Better, Faster or Cheaper than the competition by a big margin (4X). That’s how they coined the name BEFACH Products. They say, if they make a product it should be a BEFACH product or nothing. They aren’t keen in a “me too” product and getting into a price war with competition.
As Hard Water was a wide spread problem, they wanted a product that was Easy to use, Very Effective and Low Cost.
The current solutions in the market required high capital Investment requires Plumber, requires Fortnightly Regeneration, regular maintenance, Electricity and has a lot of water wastage.
With a lot of research and testing in different labs, they have developed a product that is Low cost, requires No maintenance, No Installation and is Green (No Water wastage and No Electricity required).
Hardness in water is primarily caused by high amount of Calcium and Magnesium. So instead of the traditional method of using filters to remove Calcium and Magnesium, they used a Food grade media to remove the stickiness of Calcium ions. So while Calcium continues to be in water, it does not stick to walls, Taps, buckets, hair, etc. The product is also not bulky and is of the size of a regular water bottle. It needs to be just dropped in the overhead water tank thus eliminating the need of any pipes been cut or needing any plumber. Also, because of the small size, it became possible for them to sell on E-Commerce sites like Amazon.
It cost just Rs. 3600/= (as compared to market solutions that are Rs.30,000/= onwards). It also last for a years time. Also, the body of the device is designed in such a way that it floats on top of water after its inside media is consumed. So it’s a simple indication to the customer that the product needs to be replaced.
While the sales on Amazon and website www.dcal.co.in has been exponential, Uday mentions that the real excitement is customers giving repeat orders and referring to others.
They are in the process of developing a low cost drinking water solution that can reduce the cost of Portable water from Rs. 15/litre to less than 50 paisa / litre.
