ROcean

About ROcean

Rocean, also known as Be the Change Labs, Inc., operates in the home appliance and consumer goods market with a focus on sustainable water consumption. Founded in 2017 by serial entrepreneur Sunjay Guleria, along with Mohini Boparai and Dr. Lee von Kraus, the New York-based company was established to combat single-use plastic bottle waste. Guleria, who previously founded fashion and lifestyle ventures like Exclusively.in and Sher Singh, brought his entrepreneurial experience to the clean-tech space. The founding team was driven by a mission to offer consumers their favorite beverages without the environmental toll of packaging and global shipping.

The company's flagship product is the Rocean One, a countertop smart water device. This all-in-one system connects directly to a user's tap to provide highly filtered, carbonated, and flavored water on demand. Its carbon block filtration technology is designed to remove over 75 contaminants, including lead, mercury, and microplastics. A key feature is the ability to customize beverages with adjustable carbonation levels and flavors from reusable, dishwasher-safe pods called rPods. The device supports two pods simultaneously, allowing for the micro-dosing and mixing of natural flavors and enhancements like electrolytes or vitamins. The Rocean One is a connected device, integrating with an app and smart home systems like Amazon Alexa and Google Home, which allows users to track consumption, monitor environmental impact, and automate the reordering of consumables like filters and CO2 cartridges.

Rocean's business model centers on the direct-to-consumer sale of the Rocean One device and recurring revenue from the sale of consumables such as flavor pod refills, filters, and CO2 cartridges. The company successfully ran an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign and later secured over $6 million in a funding round led by the investment firm Blue, with participation from notable investors including John Legend and Girls Who Code founder Reshma Saujani. This capital was aimed at scaling production and transforming the bottled water industry. In a significant milestone, Rocean was acquired by global water treatment company Pentair in December 2020, a move intended to advance Pentair's strategy in the residential water solutions market.