Eureka Forbes is India’s original direct-to-consumer health and hygiene company, built on a four-decade-old habit of walking into homes to sell, install and maintain the products it makes. It began in 1982 as a joint venture that introduced vacuum cleaners to the country, later became the brand that taught India to boil its water electrically, and since 2022 has operated as a professionally managed, Advent International-backed public company with a single-minded focus on water, cleaning and air. The recurring approach is to enter a category where Indian penetration is in low single digits, build awareness and a direct relationship with the household, then earn from both the product sale and the years of filter replacements and maintenance contracts that follow.
Business segments
One integrated health-and-hygiene platform with three product engines - water purification, cleaning and air - all feeding into and fed by a shared service-and-aftermarket engine that turns one-time buyers into multi-year annuity relationships.
1. Water purification: the flagship category and the household entry point
Aquaguard is the brand that built the company, and the water purifier remains the product that acquires the customer, installs the device in the kitchen, and creates the recurring revenue stream that everything else rides on.
- Market leader with a factory-to-kitchen grip - the company claims the top spot in Indian water purifiers and runs what it describes as the country’s largest manufacturing set-up for the category, with two plants that make their own reverse-osmosis membranes, so it controls both cost and quality from raw material to installed device.
- Designed for India’s 21 different waters - over 100 SKUs are engineered to handle the specific impurities found across more than 10,500 pin codes, with water laboratories staffed by microbiologists who track local conditions and feed that data into product development.
- Category creation is the growth lever - with overall penetration at just 5-7% (urban India is only 12%, versus 21% in China and 60% in South Korea), the company runs campaigns like ‘Nal Se Kapda’ that target cloth-filter users, and more than 70% of customers acquired through such efforts are first-time purifier buyers.
- Premiumisation through visible innovation - recent launches include a purifier that dispenses 80°C hot water at the press of a button, India’s first IoT-enabled smart purifier, an under-the-counter range, and filters that last two years, each designed to move the installed base up the price ladder.
2. Cleaning solutions: the original business, now a robotics story
Forbes vacuum cleaners were the product that started the company in 1982, and today the category is being redefined by robotic machines that clean, map and empty themselves - still in a market where only 2% of households own any vacuum cleaner at all.
- First mover in a near-empty market - the company introduced vacuum cleaners to India and remains the market leader, with a particularly dominant share in robotic vacuum cleaners, while national per-capita penetration sits at 2% against 90% in Japan and 20% in China.
- Robots that run themselves - the Forbes SmartClean range includes models with 7,000 Pa suction, mop extension, quick home mapping, and an auto-empty bin that holds dust for up to 65 days, turning a chore into a background task.
- Cross-sold to an existing trust relationship - the large installed base of water purifier customers is treated as the natural audience for robotic products, and the direct sales team offers in-home demonstrations that are also available to online and retail customers via live video demos.
3. Air purification: a small base, a large tailwind
Air purifiers are the company’s smallest product line today, but they sit in a country that is home to 83 of the world’s 100 most polluted cities - a fact that makes the category a bet on necessity rather than discretion.
- Made in India, built for Indian air - the Forbes air purifier range is manufactured domestically and spans smart models with auto-mode and a Surround 360 affordable-premium range.
- Penetration is barely visible - at roughly 1%, Indian air purifier adoption is so low that even a modest shift in consumer behaviour creates large percentage growth, as seen when the category grew 2.7x in FY26 off a small denominator.
4. Service and after-market: the recurring-revenue engine underneath the product portfolio
Every product the company sells is a subscription waiting to happen - the service business converts an installed base of over 8 million devices into annuity income through maintenance contracts, filter replacements and spare parts, and it is systematically pulling revenue out of the grey market that once captured it.
- A technician at the door every day - a network of roughly 8,000-14,000 service technicians covers more than 19,500 pin codes and visits over 30,000 kitchens daily for installation, routine maintenance and breakdown repairs, making the service footprint itself a competitive barrier.
- Attacking the counterfeit economy - historically, a large parallel market of spurious filters and fake annual maintenance contracts captured much of the after-market spend, so the company introduced genuine filters in a distinctive grey colour with QR-code authentication via a customer app, backed by influencer campaigns that crossed a billion views.
- Digital self-serve is scaling the model - 64% of maintenance contracts were booked digitally in FY25 (up from 28% two years earlier), over 80% of customer interactions now happen on self-serve platforms, and a revamped app with more than 1.6 million active installations lets customers authenticate filters, book service and buy products without calling anyone.
- Speed as a selling point - under an initiative called ‘Gatiman,’ the company set a target of one-hour service resolution and crossed 70% of complaints resolved within that window, while response turnaround times reached all-time highs and escalations dropped sharply in FY26.
Group structure and partners
A publicly listed company controlled by private-equity sponsor Advent International, run by a professional management team, and deliberately simplified to a single-country operating structure with no joint ventures.
- The company was created through a court-approved demerger in early 2022 that separated the health and safety solutions business from Forbes & Company Limited, with the seller bound by a five-year non-compete covering substantially similar businesses in India.
- Three direct subsidiaries exist - Forbes Aquatech, Infinite Water Solutions (which manufactures membranes and filters), and Euro Forbes Limited in Dubai - though the Board approved voluntary liquidation of the Dubai entities in August 2023, signalling a focus on the domestic market.
- The company is chaired by Arvind Uppal and led by CEO Pratik Pota, with a senior leadership team drawn from consumer and digital businesses including Jubilant FoodWorks, PepsiCo, HUL, Airtel, Amazon and Blinkit.