Meet the Founder: Hardik Dabra on Cleaning, Plastic, and Building Asepsis

The following is a first-person Q&A with Hardik Dabra, founder of Asepsis Products.

Why cleaning products? It seems like an unlikely category to build a startup in.

It is an unlikely category only if you think about it from the outside. From the inside — from the perspective of a household that mops its floor every single day — cleaning products are one of the most frequent purchases in the home. More frequent than most food items. And yet the category had barely changed in India in decades. Same pre-diluted bottles, same heavy plastic packaging, same model of selling water at a premium.

I saw a genuine gap: a format that worked better, cost less, and generated a fraction of the plastic waste — and no one bringing it to the Indian consumer market at scale. That combination of a real problem, a clear solution, and an underserved market is exactly where you want to build.

What was the hardest thing about starting Asepsis?

The hardest thing was not the product — the product worked from early on. The hardest thing was teaching people a new format. Most consumers in India had been buying pre-diluted cleaning products their entire lives. The concept of a concentrate — that a small bottle could produce 5 litres of effective cleaner — was genuinely unfamiliar to many first-time Asepsis customers.

You cannot solve that with a better label or a smarter ad. You solve it with demonstration, repetition, and patience. Every piece of Asepsis content for the first two years was essentially an education exercise — showing, not telling, how the product worked and what it produced.

You stayed in Sri Muktsar Sahib rather than moving to a startup hub. Was that a difficult choice?

It was not a difficult choice at all, actually. The assumption that you need to be in Bangalore or Mumbai to build a D2C brand is increasingly outdated. What you need is a product that works, a reliable logistics network, a channel to reach customers — and the discipline to focus on those three things rather than on startup ecosystem activities that do not directly build the business.

Sri Muktsar Sahib gives me a lower cost base, strong community connections, and the practical reality that I am close to my supply chain and operations. Building from here was a strategic decision. The internet does not care where you ship from.

What does the Asepsis customer look like?

The Asepsis customer is someone who cares about their home being genuinely clean — not just surface-clean but hygienically clean. They mop daily. They use phenyl because they understand that a fragrant floor is not automatically a disinfected floor. They are cost-conscious and respond to the ₹36/litre vs ₹150+/litre comparison once they understand the concentrate format. And increasingly, they care about the plastic waste their household generates — not in a performative way, but in a practical "I would rather not throw away six plastic bottles a month if there's an alternative" way.

West Bengal, Odisha, and Uttar Pradesh are our top markets. East India's cleaning culture — where daily mopping is a deeply ingrained household practice — is a natural fit for Asepsis.

700+ kg of plastic saved. What does that number mean to you personally?

It means the mission is real and measurable. When I started Asepsis, "Reduce Plastic, Not Hygiene" was a statement of intent. 700+ kg of plastic saved across 10,000+ customers is that intent made tangible. Each kilogram represents a household that chose concentrate over pre-diluted — that made an active decision to not buy water in a plastic bottle.

I want that number to be 7,000 kg. Then 70,000 kg. The math is straightforward — it scales with customers. What I am most focused on is making sure that every customer who tries Asepsis has a good enough experience to come back — because our 23% repeat purchase rate is where the mission actually lives. A repeat customer is not just revenue. They are permanent plastic waste avoided.

What is next for Asepsis?

Deeper distribution in East India — better availability, faster delivery, stronger presence in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities in Odisha, West Bengal, Bihar, and Assam. Growing Google organic presence alongside Facebook, so that someone searching for "floor cleaner" in any Indian city can find Asepsis without needing to see a paid ad. And continuing to educate — because the concentrate format is still unfamiliar to the majority of Indian households, and that education job is far from complete.

The product is right. The mission is right. The market is enormous. The work now is distribution, education, and trust — one customer at a time.

What would you say to someone reading this who has never tried Asepsis?

Try it once. That is genuinely all I ask. Order the Advance Phenyl (₹180, 250ml makes 5L). Mop your floor with it. See what ₹6 per mopping session looks like and what a floor disinfected with 99.9% germ kill and 12-hour fragrance feels like. Then decide whether you want to go back to buying water in a plastic bottle at ₹150 a litre.

If the product does not deliver — return it. But it will deliver. That is the confidence that 10,000+ customers and 15,000+ parcels gives me.

Reduce Plastic, Not Hygiene.

Asepsis — Reduce Plastic, Not Hygiene · www.asepsisproducts.com · Facebook & Instagram: /asepsisproducts