Tirtyl aims to expand as consumers switch on to the just add water sector

Two mates who sunk their life savings into a start-up are set to reap their rewards as consumers switch to environmentally-friendly household products.

Two university mates who took a punt with their life savings are making a splash in the emerging just-add-water home cleaning and personal products sector and now have their eyes focused on making waves around the world.

For May Bandi and Lachlan Hill, the founding of Tirtyl, which produces and sells zero-waste concentrated tablets and reusable dispensers, was an idea whose time had come.

“We believe just-add-water products are the future, and we’re proud to be leading the mainstream adoption of this technology in Australia and abroad,” said Mr Bandi, 31.

“Tirtyl products eliminate single use plastic, reduce both transport and manufacturing emissions and are undeniably better for the environment. Just-add-water – it just makes sense.”

Since launching the business in January 2021 as an initial bootstrap, Tirtyl has averaged 17 per cent month-on-month revenue growth, and now has more than 110,000 customers in Australia, the US and Norway.

In the calendar year 2021, they notched up $1.6m in revenue, in 2022 $3.76m and have forecast $8m for this year.

This year Tirtyl will expand its channels to market, transitioning from an e-commerce business to wholesalers and retailers both locally and abroad.

And there are no signs of slowing down for the start-up with a recent launch into Britain and imminent plans to enter the European market.

Tirtyl co-founders and owners Lachlan Hill and May Bandi in their Woolloongabba warehouse. Picture: Liam Kidston

The company has avoided going down the crowd funding path. In 2022 they had a $600,000 capital raise through venture capital fund AfterWork Ventures in Sydney. They will kick off another $1.5m plus capital raise in this month to underpin their overseas expansion.

“We intentionally avoided crowd-funding because we don’t believe retail investors can appropriately evaluate the risks associated with high-growth company investments,” said Mr Bandi who is Tirtyl’s head of commercial and finance

“We’ve seen businesses over the past few years crowdfund at valuations that the private capital markets would consider exorbitant, and we think that’s genuinely unfair for the retail investor.”

The genesis of Tirtyl began when the pair met at St John’s College at the University of Queensland in 2009 and became best friends.

After graduating and travelling overseas Mr Bandi settled into the fintech sector and Mr Hill found his way as a strategy and operations consultant.

However, it was during the Covid pandemic in 2020 after a flurry of emails and phone calls that the then Sydney-based Mr Bandi and Mr Hill, who was studying in the UK, decided to return to Brisbane and start a business.

They found a house to live in and elected to invest the $120,000 they had each set aside for their respective home deposits into a new business.

The question was: What business?

Their criteria was simple: Find a business that could be genuinely commercially successful and at the same time do social good.

They were looking for a green business idea and one which helped reduce the amount of plastics in the ocean was a logical step.

Mr Hill, 32, said he came face-to-face with the problem of ocean plastic during a surfing trip in South East Asia.

“I had a bit of a jarring moment when I was surfing in southeast Asia and I was diving into a wave and as I came up for air I had a plastic nappy on my face which was a pretty visceral experience to say the least,” he said.

The Tirtyl universal cleaner duo kit.

Mr Hill – who is head of product, operations and impact at Tirtyl – said they became inspired after walking through their local Bunnings hardware store and seeing plastic bottles with various cleaning products.

“We saw the major ingredient was water so we thought why can’t we get the water out and create a tablet. It was not that easy but it was in a way as simple as that,” he said.

“We don’t have a chemistry background but we consulted with a chemist. We took out the water and that was the start.”

The business entered the market with a zero-waste foaming hand-soap, soon followed with a suite of zero-waste products including a world-first, just-add-water body wash, dishwasher tablets, laundry sheets and hand wash.

With every tablet sold, Tirtyl is doubling down on the plastic waste problem by both preventing and collecting waste.

From day 1, Tirtyl have been donating proceeds of every sale to social causes, proving first-hand that small businesses can be commercially successful, while delivering better outcomes for people and the planet.

So far Tirtyl collected over 5 million bottles of ocean-bound plastic in the past two years through their official partnership with Plastic Bank – a Canadian for-profit social enterprise that builds recycling ecosystems in underdeveloped communities.

In addition to reaching this significant milestone, we’re currently distributing over 4000 dissolvable tablets a day, each representing products typically purchased in plastic bottles.

Tirtyl is based in Woolloongabba in Brisbane and currently has 10 full time staff and four casuals and is looking to increase staffing levels.

Mr Bandi said just-add-water products were the future.

“We’re proud to be leading the mainstream adoption of this technology in Australia and abroad. This is only the beginning. The more we scale, the greater our impact.,” he said.

“It simply makes too much sense environmentally and economically for the world not to embrace this change.

“Once people understand how just-add-water works, it’s a no-brainer switch.”