In a keynote panel titled ‘The Titan Touch: Entrepreneurial Prowess Meets Investment Acumen,’ moderated by Priyanka Sahay, Assistant Editor, ETPrime, at the Delhi-NCR chapter of the ET Soonicorns Summit 2023, Sahay highlighted how Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, Co-founders of Titan Capital and Snapdeal, have not just been the poster boys of the Indian startup ecosystem but over the years they have grown to become the most prolific set of investors in the country. An enduring testament to their investment acumen is indeed Mama Earth whose parent company Honasa recently made its public market debut.
ET Special“Most people would think that we must have got an email from a kids personal care company; however nothing of that sort happened,” said Bahl, recalling how he discovered Mama Earth. In fact, a white and green bottle at his child’s shower caught his attention which prompted him to enquire more about the brand from his wife. The year was 2017 when Bahl’s wife reached out to a Facebook mothers’ group seeking help to find an “organic” (the term toxin-free was yet not in circulation) brand for children. Within two hours, 20 mothers replied, with 18 of them recommending Mama Earth.“What they have built is so inspirational for the entire ecosystem…they (Varun and Ghazal) didn’t come from any IIT-IIM background… They weren’t senior leaders or CXOs at any large company or startup… They built a product in a space where there are companies who have profits equal to their market cap; they built a large company in a span of six-seven years which is profitable and also loved by consumers,” said Bahl, stressing on the incredible journey of the direct-to-consumer (D2C) brand.
The content-to-commerce model, ‘good’ for brands and consumers
In October 2017, Darpan Sanghvi launched DTC beauty brand MyGlamm. In August 2020, MyGlamm acquired the content platform for women, POPxo and the influencer marketing platform, Plixxo. Priyanka Gill founded both POPXo and Plixxo in 2013. Soon, MyGlamm also acquired parenting platform and community, BabyChakra, founded by Naiyaa Saggi.
Today, the Good Glamm Group — referred to as a global digital beauty conglomerate — is divided into three core segments: Good Brands Co, comprising all its D2C beauty and personal care brands; Good Media Co, encompassing its digital media brands and influencer platform Good Creator Co. (There is also the recently started Good Glamm Community.)
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Gill, who started as a media entrepreneur, leads POPxo, ScoopWhoop, Miss Malini and Baby Chakra, all under Good Media Co. “When MyGlamm, POPxo and Plixxo merged together in August 2020, the basic thesis was that the digital brands of the future have to be built on the basis of content and commerce together because if we were to go along the journey of commerce alone, marketing would be extremely expensive,” said Priyanka Gill, Group Co-founder, Good Glamm Group, at a Fireside chat titled ‘Scale 2.0: How content and commerce at scale will power India’s first global beauty company”. The session was moderated by Miloni Bhatt, Digital Broadcast Editor, Economictimes.com.
ET SpecialMyGlamm, touted to be the second largest personal care and makeup brand in India, is home to a diverse set of brands, each with its own distinctive voice, niche and tone. Sample this: St. Botanica sells shampoos and hair care products, while Sirona sells menstrual cups and other menstrual health and hygiene products along with personal care products.
“We have a bouquet of companies that sell to very different audience groups; they sell a very different line of products. Each of these brands are brands in themselves and follow the best practices in brand building,” said Gill.
As an approach that has worked for the group, Gill emphasised that content creators and influencers should be native to wherever the brand is building from. However, content-creator-community as a strategy is not going to change no matter where the brand chooses to operate.
She shed light on a similar approach to the eclectic media platforms housed under Good Media Co: POPxo, a primarily female-centric platform; ScoopWhoop, a digital media platform; Tweak which appeals to a very engaged and mature female audience; Baby Chakra which engages with parents and mothers; while MissMalini is a Bollywood and fashion content platform.
“Each of these platforms have to be very independent; have to hold on to their own voice and tone. And the beauty of the Good Glamm group is that we have managed to figure out our synergies within our ecosystem to ultimately build towards our aim of selling more and more products through our brands,” explained Gill.
Regarding the way forward for D2C brands, she highlighted omnichannel is the way forward for India. Omnichannel includes online marketplaces as well as offline kirana stores, experience centres or multi-brand retail outlets like Shoppers Stop. “You have to sell to your audience where your audience wants to buy from,” said Gill.
She also added that Tier II and Tier III are really coming up, with consumers from these pockets being as aware as their counterparts might be in Tier I cities, and they mirror similar expectations from brands as well. “So, there’s no need to water down your propositions because you are selling to Tier II and Tier III; it’s our job as a brand builder to ensure that we stay consistent and provide the same level of service, convenience and messaging to our consumers no matter where they stay…” emphasised Gill, sharing a critical learning for D2C brands looking to scale.
Watch the full conversation with Priyanka Gill here
Delving into omnichannel and winning strategies for Indian D2C brands
In a panel discussion titled ‘Cracking the omnichannel business model: Strategies for D2C startups to win and achieve global scale’, session moderator Sahay engaged panellists Radhika Ghai, Founder, KindLife and ShopClues; Pawan Gupta, Founder and CEO, Fashinza; Ankur Pahwa, Managing Partner, PeerCapital; Deepanshu Manchanda, Founder and CEO, ZappFresh, and Atul Mehta, COO, ShipRocket, to delve into the evolving facets of the diverse D2C space.
ET SpecialAs highlighted by Sahay, D2C isn’t a sector or a segment. D2C is a medium; it’s a technology through which a lot of companies are trying to put their products across to consumers.
Talking about leveraging online and offline channels and his early journey in assessing customer expectations, Deepanshu Manchanda, Founder and CEO, ZappFresh, said that the journey for the online meat delivery platform has been unique as even customers weren’t aware of what they wanted. “The new generation didn’t know what they wanted as they were used to being dependent on their parents or elders in the family who had been doing it (buying meat in local markets) for a while… We rode the story of a good cut, setting the benchmark, the temperature, and disseminating a lot of education in terms of how to cook it, eat it, store it,” shared Manchanda. He added that today the brand has passed the stage of understanding customer dynamics, and the platform is operating in a fairly growing and maturing category.
Meanwhile, ShopClues, which primarily targets millennial and Gen Z customers, started at a time when e-commerce was nascent in India. Echoing Sahay’s point, Radhika Ghai, Founder, KindLife and ShopClues, said, “D2C is a great channel as it gives brands access to customer data, letting them control and retarget customer experience. All of this isn’t possible when a brand is selling through platforms. Now does this make platforms redundant? Or does this make omnichannel redundant? No. The answer lies in a combination of both.”
When Ghai started ShopClues in 2011, it was the era of e-commerce 1.0. E-commerce 2.0 ushered in online brands marking their offline debut, followed by the birth of brand aggregator platforms and so on, highlighted Ghai, adding that it is only during the past three-four years that digital-first brands have come of age, with Mama Earth’s being a great success story to celebrate. KindLife is a platform for digital-first brands, while ShopClues as a platform serves offline-first brands.
Watch the full panel discussion on ‘Cracking the omnichannel business model: Strategies for D2C startups to win and achieve global scale’ here
The D2C enablers
Not every startup is a D2C player in this diverse landscape. ShipRocket, for instance, enables the pace of D2C startups through its robust logistics infrastructure.
“At ShipRocket, we believe that if direct commerce has to succeed there has to be robust post-order operating services, and that’s fundamentally what we are trying to build,” said Atul Mehta, COO, ShipRocket. He added that the post-checkout experience has a lot of scope for improvement, including product reaching, to faster delivery, tracking messages, and the entire tracking experience.
Pawan Gupta, Founder and CEO, Fashinza, emphasised that a fast-paced fashion space demands faster product innovation every month, quarter and season, which calls for a strong backend support for product development and manufacturing, encompassing technology and hardware, and this is where Fashinza comes into the picture.
“Fashinza helps with product innovation and manufacturing; D2C fashion startups can give their customers what they want rather than relying on what the startup specialised in five years ago… The D2C space gives startups access to so much customer data and insights into their demands and aspirations, so naturally a D2C fashion startup would want to be able to continuously supply customers what they desire. This means they would be required to increase their product base and continuously offer new things… However, the level of innovation that is required to constantly churn out new products is something that brands find challenging,” said Gupta.
Furthermore, D2C startups are not tech startups and hence demand a different lens from investors. “We had a very different outlook towards the D2C space when we were locked up during Covid and the virus has hit all of us in misinterpreting how India is going to consume online…both investors and founders are guilty of overestimating that the behaviours would stay longer, of overestimating that since we were forced to buy everything online given a choice we would continue to do so…,” said Ankur Pahwa, Managing Partner, PeerCapital, highlighting how investors would prioritise tech-oriented, Western-oriented models.
Pahwa added that digital-native brands and D2C brands are very important for the consumerisation story to expand and move forward. Going against the tech gold rush, Pahwa added that the firm has been focusing on enablers who spur the story of consumerisation in India.
The ET Soonicorns Summit 2023 was co-presented by Persistent – Google Cloud and had myBiz by Makemytrip as the Scaleup Enabler; Persistent – Google Maps as the Associate Partner; SAP India as the Technology Partner; Balancehero India as the Associate Partner; Tracxn as the Research Partner and Kimirica, Deciwood, Boat, Sleepy Owl, Beyond Snack and Jaggic as Gifting Partners.
Watch the full ET Soonicorns Summit 2023 here
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