How Neha Marda turned post-pregnancy struggle into a business: ‘Solving my own problem’

Neha Marda runs a successful business and was even featured on Shark Tank India. But the Doli Armaano Ki actor adds that becoming an entrepreneur is just a diversification — she will always identify as an actor first. “Very early in my career, I was even called the ‘worst actress of the year’,” Marda says.

In an exclusive email interview, Marda tells us about her journey, what led her to launch a brand, how pregnancy changed things for her, and whether she will ever make a comeback on screen.

Neha Marda: I wouldn’t call it a career change at all, drastic or otherwise. Acting is my life; I am an actor and an artist first, and that hasn’t changed.

What happened with Phitku was more of a diversification. I never set out to build it; it evolved out of a personal problem I was dealing with, and one thing led to another.

Acting has taught me a lot along the way: discipline, consistency, handling rejection, understanding people and, most importantly, the ability to keep showing up. Those lessons have naturally carried into this new avenue, too.

So I don’t see it as leaving acting behind for something else. Acting is still who I am. Entrepreneurship is simply something that has found its way into my life alongside it.

Q. Were there never moments of doubt, especially since you had become a familiar face on TV, especially following Balika Vadhu?

Neha Marda: Of course there were moments of doubt.

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I entered television at 17 and, honestly, it wasn’t easy at first. I was very young, I didn’t know the craft, and very early in my career I was even called the “worst actress of the year.” I had to learn to handle criticism and rejection early on.

Then came Balika Vadhu, which changed the scale of my career. People recognised me, work became consistent, and I became a familiar face. So yes, leaving that familiarity and entering a completely new space came with its own uncertainty.

But I think my years in television had already taught me something important: you cannot wait until you feel completely ready.

You learn while doing. That is exactly what I did with entrepreneurship. I knew how to act. I didn’t know how to build a business. So I learnt. I asked questions, surrounded myself with people who knew things I didn’t, and kept going.

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Q. But why ‘Phitku’? What prompted you to enter the wellness industry, especially with a product like alum?

Neha Marda: I actually wasn’t thinking about the wellness industry or a business opportunity at all when this started. I was simply looking for a solution to a problem I was dealing with personally.

After my pregnancy, I noticed changes in my body that made me much more conscious of body odour, and I looked for something that actually solved it for me, not just masked it.

During that search, I came across phitkari. I’d grown up seeing and hearing about it, but I’d never thought of it as anything beyond that.

My brother, Sumit, looked at what I’d found and saw something much bigger. He was the one who recognised this as a real market opportunity, not me. I wasn’t building a brand then; I was just trying to feel better in my own skin.

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Entrepreneurship was never part of my original plan. I got into it almost by accident, and I’ve been learning ever since, the same way I learnt acting. I started as someone who was literally called the worst actress of the year, and years of showing up, learning, and improving led to me being named best actress and earning 27 awards. I’m approaching Phitku exactly the same way, learning as I go, asking questions, and being comfortable not knowing everything on day one.

Actors Neha Marda and Smita Bansal in a scene from Balika Vadhu. (Express archive photo)

Q. Walk us through the personal story that prompted you to turn this into a venture. Who actually told you about alum?

Neha Marda: Nobody sat me down and said, “build a brand around alum.” That’s not how it happened.

I was dealing with a personal problem after my pregnancy, and I had a lot of time to read and research because I was on a fairly restricted routine. I wasn’t thinking about a venture at all; I just wanted to find something that worked for me.

That’s when I started reading about phitkari. I realised it had been used traditionally for various purposes, had antibacterial properties, and was directly connected to what I was dealing with: body odour.

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I’d actually been conscious of this even during my acting years, on sets for long hours and constantly around people; these are the kinds of things that can turn into real personal insecurities.

So for me, at that stage, this was still just about solving my own problem.

My brother, Sumit, saw it differently. He looked at the solution I’d found for myself and recognised the larger market opportunity in it, something I genuinely hadn’t considered. He’s the one who saw that this could become a business.

From there, we spent about a year and a half researching, developing, testing, and rebuilding the product before launching Phitku. And honestly, I never set out to be an entrepreneur. I learnt it the same way I learnt everything else: by doing it, asking questions, and allowing myself not to have all the answers right away.

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Q. Your pitch received mixed reviews on Shark Tank India, with Sharks even calling it ‘overpriced’ and ‘gimmicky’. How did it affect the brand, positively and/or negatively?

Neha Marda: Shark Tank was an extremely valuable experience for us, irrespective of the opinions that came out of the pitch.

When you’re building a business, you’re obviously very close to your product. You believe in it because you’ve spent years working on it. Going into a room where experienced investors question your product, pricing, margins, category and business model forces you to look at the company from another perspective.

Some of the feedback was challenging, and some of it was encouraging. But we didn’t look at one episode or one comment as the final verdict on our business.

What mattered to us was what happened with consumers. People kept buying the product, using it, talking about it, and coming back to us with their experiences. That gave us a much larger and more meaningful feedback loop.

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So Shark Tank gave us visibility, but the consumer response gave us validation.

Q. But how do you justify selling alum, a cheap product, for Rs 999?

Neha Marda: I think the comparison is slightly incomplete. We’re not selling a piece of raw alum for Rs 999. We’re building a finished consumer product around the ingredient. There is a significant difference between the cost of an ingredient and the value of the final product.

A consumer is paying for the formulation, product development, testing, quality control, packaging, manufacturing, design, distribution, customer experience and the convenience of using it as an everyday roll-on.

We spent about a year and a half on research and development before launching Phitku. We made multiple iterations, failures, and improvements.

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So the question for us was never, “What does the raw material cost?” It was, “Can we create a product that delivers a meaningful experience and solves a real consumer problem?”

That’s the value we are trying to build.

Q. How long did it take you to launch Phitku, from ideation to research? How many medical experts did you consult during the process?

Neha Marda: It took us around one and a half years from the initial idea to developing the product.

It wasn’t a straightforward process where we had an idea and immediately manufactured it. We did extensive research, formulation work, testing, and iteration.

We worked with scientists, laboratories, and technical experts during development and spent considerable time understanding the ingredient, its properties, and how to translate it into a consumer-friendly product.

We also travelled and looked at what was being done in other markets to see whether similar solutions existed elsewhere.

For me, the biggest part of the process was being willing to keep going back to the drawing board.

We made it, broke it, tested it and improved it repeatedly before we were satisfied enough to launch.

Q. You market your product as a roll-on deodorant. What attracts people to a non-fragrant product in a world obsessed with perfumes and mists?

Neha Marda: I don’t think we are competing against fragrance. People love perfumes, body mists and smelling good, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

What we wanted to question was whether freshness always has to mean adding another fragrance.

With Phitku, we wanted to address odour rather than simply cover it with another smell. That distinction resonated with people who were looking for something different from a conventional deodorant.

And that philosophy is also becoming important as Phitku expands into other categories. Whether it is deodorant, oral care or the products we are developing next, we want to focus on solving a problem rather than simply masking it.

Q. You are now the owner of a company that reportedly earns over Rs 2 crore per month. Did you expect such a response?

Neha Marda: Honestly, no. When we started, I focused more on whether we could build a product that genuinely solved a problem and whether people would accept it.

The growth has been incredibly encouraging, but what excites me even more is seeing the brand evolve. Phitku started with deodorant, but today we have already launched Mouth Paste and are working on several new products.

So I no longer look at the numbers as a reflection of one product. For me, they also reflect the trust people place in the brand and their willingness to try something new from us.

Of course, business growth matters, but customer feedback, repeat purchases and people choosing to explore another Phitku product are equally meaningful to me.

Q. Now that you have established your brand, do you have any plans of returning to TV? If yes, why? If no, why not?

Neha Marda: Acting is my life, and it always will be. I’ve never closed that door, and I don’t think I ever could. If I’m being completely honest, I’d love to be doing this for as long as I possibly can. I’ve often said I’d want to be on a film set until my very last day; that’s how much I love this craft.

That said, Phitku is at a really exciting stage right now. We’ve gone from deodorant to launching Mouth Paste, and there’s more in the pipeline. So while acting will always be part of who I am, I’m being selective; I’d only take up the right project at the right time, rather than saying yes to everything and anything.

Q. What are the biggest lessons your professional journey has taught you?

Neha Marda: The biggest lesson for me is that your career doesn’t have to follow a straight line.

When I started acting, I never imagined I would be sitting here talking about building a consumer brand. And when I started Phitku, I certainly didn’t know that the journey would eventually take us beyond deodorant into oral care and other categories.

I have learnt that you don’t always need to have the entire journey figured out before you begin. Sometimes you just need to recognise the problem in front of you, take the first step and allow the journey to evolve.

The other thing I have learnt is the value of consistency. Talent can open a door, but consistency is what keeps you moving when things don’t go according to plan.

Q. What is more challenging: running a business or shooting for close to 20 hours for a daily soap?

Neha Marda: They’re challenging in completely different ways. A 20-hour shoot is physically exhausting. You’re working with schedules, scenes, memorising lines, changing costumes, performing repeatedly and staying consistent even when you’re tired.

But entrepreneurship has a different kind of pressure. On a set, someone eventually says, “Pack up.” In a business, there is no pack up. You wake up thinking about the business, and you go to sleep thinking about the business.

Decisions surround the product, customers, people, finances, operations, marketing, and growth. Often, there isn’t a clear answer. So acting taught me to work long hours. Entrepreneurship taught me how to live with uncertainty.

Q. Did you think your popularity helped your product?

Neha Marda: It definitely helped with initial awareness. People already knew me, so there was a certain familiarity and curiosity when I spoke about Phitku.

But awareness can get someone to try a product once. It cannot make them come back, recommend it to someone else or trust you with another category.

That is something I have become very conscious of as we’ve grown. Today, Phitku is moving beyond the product that first introduced people to us. We have launched Mouth Paste and have more products coming, so the real test is whether people trust the brand enough to take that journey with us.

My acting background may have opened the first door, but I believe the product, the customer experience and the value we create are what keep the door open.

Q. What is the biggest challenge of running a business in India?

Neha Marda: One of the biggest challenges has been changing consumer habits while simultaneously building the systems required to support that change.

When you create something different, you first have to explain why it is different. With Phitku, we were asking people to rethink what they expected from a deodorant. Now, as we expand into categories like oral care and launch more products, that education becomes even more important.

At the same time, scaling a business means making sure the backend grows as quickly as the consumer demand: manufacturing, quality control, supply chain, distribution, customer experience and the team.

Building a brand is not just about having a good product. It is about creating the infrastructure and trust to deliver that product consistently as you grow. That has been one of my biggest learning curves.