Terra: India's No. 1 Biodegradable Products Brand


By Rachit Juneja

June 18, 2021


“We don’t need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly.”Anne Marie Bonneau


Toothbrushes add 1.3 billion pounds of plastic waste and take over 400 years to decompose. Thus, the founders of Terra set out on a mission to makebrushing’ sustainable. Taking Anne Marie Bonneau’s quote forward, with the will to conquer the world and a few hits and trials,  they settled on working around the product - Bamboo as it was obtainable and biodegradable. Today, Terra offers a range of natural, organic, and eco-friendly personal and home care products that are 100% biodegradable. They launched  ‘Terrabrush’ in 2018 and received an overwhelming response - made 10,000 sales in the first month and tripled sales by the 3rd month, but their biggest win was that they had saved the planet from 27 tonnes of plastic! Additionally, they also pay focus on designing plastic-free packaging for the product which is being sold online.

We got in touch with the founders of Terra to find out more about their journey and here's what we found out:


About Terra’s product category: 


“Terra is an all in one eco-friendly platform which caters to millions of people who care and protect the environment. We at Terra are trying to fight against one of the biggest enemies on the earth, something that has taken over humankind- a plastic toothbrush, which is extensively used and being thrown away in billions every day and eliminating the harm that the plastic toothbrushes unleash into the environment after its disposal. We have saved the planet from 50 tonnes of plastic.”

How has Covid 19 impacted your market? Have you taken any steps over the last few months to battle it?

“Covid has actually made many realise how badly we have impacted our mother nature. Switching to things that are more sustainable is the future. We as a team truly believe in that and we are trying to get as many products as we can in this sector.”

Sustainability has become a huge part of most brands in India today. With so much competition around the very essence of "sustainability and being environment friendly", where do you think Terra stands? 

“Terra believes in saving Mother Earth from plastic and harmful substances that don't recycle, melt or dissolve over the years. Our aim is to make this place free from plastic as much as we can.”

Karthick, Arjun & Harrish (Co-Founders of Terra)


What made you come up with the idea of Terra? What kind of scope did you see in a product like this? 

“In college, me and my 2 best friends dreamed of just one thing–making it big. And when I say big, I mean getting those big bucks. At the time, Instagram was the new thing. Every time we saw a motivational quote with a man in a suit, standing next to his Rolls Royce, we’d get fired up and talk about our start-up ideas. DiCaprio in Wolf of Wall Street was our idol! When you’re young and impressionable, just one event can change your life. For us, it was the 2015 Chennai floods.
Our city drowned; the floods swept away homes and destroyed lives. Chennai didn’t look like itself anymore. We students decided to step out and help. Waist deep in sewage water, we collected tonnes of plastic; 200 people and an entire day later, we’d still only cleaned up half the vicinity. Having been skin-to-skin with waste all day, the reality of our pollution levels hit us–our world had become a product of plastic. All this while we’d thought about profits whilst leaving the most important ‘P’ out–our Planet; our home. This time, we were fired up to make a change. Later, we couldn’t stop talking about sustainable start-up ideas.
We brainstormed for a year, experimented, and failed until we realized our answer lay in the floods–toothbrushes made up the 2nd highest amount of waste collected that day!
So, we set out to make ‘brushing’ sustainable. Finally, in 2018 we launched ‘Terrabrush’. The response was overwhelming–We made 10,000 sales in the first month and tripled sales by the 3rd month, but our biggest win was that we’d saved the planet from 27 tonnes of plastic!”

What are the most rewarding marketing activities for your business? 

“We would say it is that we saved our planet from 50 tonnes of plastic till date and this number will gradually go higher.”

Do you see any innovation coming up in the space of content marketing and the amalgamation of sustainability with the same?

“There will definitely be innovation and amalgamation in the near future. As the idea of Homegrown, made in India, sustainable and Transparency is rising. Consumers are getting more vocal about what they need, what they wear or eat. The awareness will lead to this amalgamation.”