Neha Marda, founder of the personal care brand Phitku, has defended selling purified alum for around ₹700, arguing that safety should not come with a bargain-bin price tag. "There is no affordable version of safety," she said, according to a report in Hindustan Times.

The comment lands at the centre of a debate that has followed Phitku since it first pitched on television: can a premium personal care brand convince Indians to pay several times more for a product that essentially reworks a substance sold for a few rupees at the local kirana store?

Why Phitku costs ₹700

Alum, or phitkari, has been used in Indian households for generations as a cheap, natural remedy for body odour. Marda's pitch is that raw industrial alum is unsafe for direct skin use in the way her product is designed to be used, and that turning it into a cosmetic-grade item is where the real cost sits.

"The biggest cost component in Phitku is not the promotions but the purification process. Taking raw alum to cosmetic-grade, IP-standard purity through our proprietary purification technology, until it meets the required standards, is where the money and effort goes," Neha Marda told Hindustan Times.

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What's actually in the bottle

According to a separate report in the Indian Express, Phitku is positioned as an alternative to regular deodorant sticks, made from refined alum stone combined with other natural ingredients and marketed to give 24-hour freshness against body odour.

That framing matters. Phitku isn't selling itself as a novelty item or a wellness trend product. It's asking to be judged against the deodorant aisle, where a can of spray or a roll-on typically costs a fraction of ₹700.

The Shark Tank pitch and the pricing pushback

Phitku's pricing became a national talking point after Marda pitched the brand on Shark Tank India. News18 reported that the underarm roll-on was priced at ₹999 during the pitch, and the sharks pressed Neha Marda hard on whether ordinary Indian buyers would accept that.

Shark Tank Judge Namita Thapar put it bluntly: "Rs 200 mein deo milte hain, Rs 100 mein bhi milte hain, aur aapka Rs 999 ka hai. India relate kar paayegi?" ("Deodorants are available for ₹200, even ₹100, and yours costs ₹999. Will India relate to it?")

Despite the grilling, the pitch ended with a deal. Moneycontrol reported that Aman Gupta and Anupam Mittal each invested ₹1.8 crore for 1% equity, valuing Phitku at ₹180 crore.

Neha Marda later pushed back on how the episode was cut together. She said the show had dramatized her pitch and had edited out how the pricing conversation was actually resolved, according to a follow-up report from Indian Express.

Img Src : The Financial Express

From ₹99 to ₹700: a steep climb

Phitku wasn't always a premium product. An earlier Hindustan Times report on Neha Marda's business journey noted that the brand began at a much lower price point, with an initial offer around ₹99, before the formula was refined and the price rose sharply to where it sits today.

That jump, from double digits to roughly ₹700, is really the crux of the criticism. It's one thing to charge a premium for a genuinely reformulated, purified product. It's another to ask price-sensitive Indian buyers, many of whom still see phitkari as a five-rupee household item, to make that leap without hesitation.

What it means for buyers

There's also a live discrepancy worth flagging: while the most recent Hindustan Times interview puts the price at around ₹700, the Shark Tank pitch and News18's coverage cited ₹999 for the underarm roll-on. Whether that's a price cut, a different SKU, or a rounding of figures across reports isn't fully clear from the coverage so far.

For now, Phitku's bet is that enough Indian consumers will pay up for a purified, cosmetic-grade take on a home remedy they already trust. Whether the market agrees, at ₹700 or ₹999, is the question the brand will keep having to answer.