Founder who returned: Inside Deep Bajaj’s journey from building Sirona to buying it back

Over a decade ago, a Delhi entrepreneur who had dabbled in events, handmade carpets, and hospitality exports stumbled upon a problem most men never notice, the daily struggle women face with public washrooms. What began as a simple attempt to solve his wife’s and mother’s discomfort with unhygienic toilets soon turned into a category-defining innovation.

Deep Bajaj launched PeeBuddy, a stand-and-pee device for women, which became one of the most selling products of its time, without realising that the small experiment would mark the beginning of his true entrepreneurial journey. What followed was the birth of Sirona, a feminine hygiene brand that grew from one taboo-breaking product to a full-stack women’s hygiene company offering solutions across toilet hygiene, period pain management, sanitary disposal, intimate care, and more.

Read e4m report on Deep Bajaj stepping down as Sirona Founder

Over time, Sirona expanded to 40+ SKUs addressing “puberty-to-menopause” needs and turned Bajaj into one of the most recognisable voices in India’s femtech ecosystem. But the journey took an unexpected turn in 2021, when Bajaj decided to sell his fast-growing company to the Good Glamm Group.

According to Bajaj, it was a deal that made sense on all four pillars he cared about, including customers, team, investors, and founders. Good Glamm’s offline reach and content-to-commerce engine promised scale. Sirona’s investors made 6–20X returns and the team got access to a larger house. The two-year earn-out phase kept Sirona’s momentum intact, pushing it to a ₹120-130 crore run rate. However, after his exit, Good Glamm’s financial headwinds began to spill over. Sirona felt the impact, as its revenue started to decline, momentum stalled, and the innovation-first culture that Bajaj had built began to erode.

And then, everything changed. This is what made him an unintentional refounder. Since buying back the brand in early 2025, Bajaj has been rebuilding Sirona 2.0 from the ground up.

All about Good Glamm Group’s Sirona deal

The Turning Point

It all started when he decided to step away from his brainchild. The silence that came after the sale was more disturbing, he said. “For the first three months after I sold, there was a huge identity void. Your company becomes your identity, suddenly there’s no team, no customers, nothing to check on. Money doesn’t fill that void,” he said in an interview with e4m.

‘Reclaiming’ the Sirona brand.

That void is also what kept him closely connected to Sirona even after his exit. Staying in touch with the team, customers, investors and well-wishers came instinctively to him, and it was this continued proximity that eventually revealed how severely the brand was struggling.

Post his exit, Sirona’s fortunes began to shift. He started watching his team struggle, operational delays, payment bottlenecks and fulfillment issues hit the customer experience. The best-selling listings Sirona had held for years on Amazon, Nykaa and Flipkart began slipping.

By the time 18 months had passed, the brand had lost its momentum. “Watching Sirona struggle was even more painful than selling it,” he said. Seeing his brainchild falter, and unwilling to let the brand fade, Bajaj decided to buy Sirona back. “We had built this with so much love. I just couldn’t let it die. I wouldn’t have done it any other way,” Bajaj said.

Bajaj told e4m that during the 18 months away, he knew he wanted to start something of his own again, but he could never commit to a new idea, his mind and heart were still with Sirona.

Ironically, Bajaj recalled that the 18 months when he wasn’t a founder taught him more about being one than the eight years he spent building Sirona. He explored new ideas, invested in over 50 startups, and closely observed other founders succeed, stumble and rebuild. “Startups are not about ideas. They’re about the founder's passion. And I realised my passion didn’t come for anything else.”

So when he saw the brand decline, the decision became immediate. “I had given eight years of my life to build it. I knew it would be tough, but I had to bring it back to life,” he told e4m. With that one instinctive decision, Bajaj became one of the few entrepreneurs in India to step into the journey of a refounder.

“Selling Sirona was not giving up. It was making a choice that I believed would help customers, team, investors, and founders at that time. Buying it back wasn’t about ego either. It was about responsibility, opportunity, and love for the mission we started with,” he said.

Refounding Sirona

“People think doing it again is easier. It’s actually harder. When you’re out for 18 months, everything changes — quick commerce explodes, formats shift, competition gets hungrier, and you’ve already lost your momentum,” Bajaj said.

He believes the second innings of entrepreneurship doesn’t become easier, only the founder becomes better equipped to handle uncertainty. For him, rebuilding Sirona 2.0 isn’t about reviving a fallen brand; it’s about returning to a mission. Unlike many comeback stories, this one isn’t rooted in ego, valuation swings or sentimentality. “If Sirona 2.0 fails, only the mission will hurt. Not the money, not the reputation. The regret would be that we couldn’t take the mission further.” That mission remains unchanged: solving unaddressed menstrual and intimate hygiene problems for Indian women, he said.

When Bajaj took Sirona back in early 2025, he said the business was “almost at zero”. Since then, his focus has been on fixing what broke during the 18 months he was away. He calls FY26 the “year of resurrection”, a period devoted to stabilising the business before chasing scale. “Our core remains period problems; everything else sits in the outer circle.”

To rebuild Sirona from the ground up, the first three fixes were the fundamentals. The products had become dated, so he upgraded all of them. He personally met every channel partner, from Amazon and Nykaa to Flipkart and offline distributors, to reset relationships. And he worked on restoring fulfillment and supply chain efficiency, which he calls “the biggest breakage point”.

Sirona’s 2025–26 roadmap follows a back-to-basics playbook focussed on stability, not showmanship. “This year is resurrection, stabilising, fixing, digging. FY27 will be the bounce-back year,” added Bajaj.

On the marketing front, he has intentionally held off on large campaigns or splashy spends. The brand is relying on Pinkathon hygiene partnerships, college activations, ambassador programmes, on-ground sampling, and only essential digital spends. “I’m just doing the basics again, staying close to customers, the team, partners and investors.”

Sirona’s story is no longer just about creating categories or breaking taboos. As Sirona 2.0 takes shape, the spotlight is equally on Bajaj’s rare journey as a refounder, and whether he can rebuild the brand in a category that is now crowded with aggressive new players and rapid innovation. This time, the challenge isn’t only about mission; it’s about execution, relevance and reclaiming lost ground. How Bajaj navigates this phase will decide whether Sirona’s second act becomes a comeback, or a reinvention.