825.30Mn - the number of potential customers online 1,436 - the number of startups launched in 2021 (15% ↑ from 2020 ) 71 of those raised funding totaling $871Mn in 1yr

Now we see big-box stores offering a digital & customer-centric experience drawn directly from the D2C playbook to acquire & retain customers.

While they are playing catchup, the new-age D2C is leveling up across areas

You saw how the Thrasio Model worked wonders, then spawned something similar…

The House Of Brands Model (Strategy) Where organizations market two or more different brands. Typically the expertise of the parent corporation is applied through one or more standalone house brands.

This allows each brand to resonate with customers & prospects in its own way.

With 64% of startups in 2020-21 succeeding without even dipping a pinkie into loss, the House of Brands Model sees huge popularity.

Example 

• Full-stack fashion platform Bewakoof, started in 2012 as a seller of quirky mobile covers. It is now a youth-centric D2C business.

• Hosting over 150 brands but still listed as a brand on other marketplaces. Bewakoof is adding a marketplace business called Bazaar to their house backed by investors such as IvyCap, Investcorp, & Spring Marketing Capital ($23Mn raised)

The majority of D2C brands are strategizing reinvestments around extending their product portfolio, backed by funds raised or by experimenting into newer and more niche segments.

• Beco, a D2C brand for household products, claims a 500% growth in under 1year and is now scaling further by expanding those touchpoints.

• Aakash Anand, Founder & CEO, Bella Vita Organic, who raised $10Mn in 2021 said, “...expanding our categories/subcategories, adding more & more products formulated to help our consumers give problem-oriented solutions"

Along a similar ideology, Dark Stores came into play. (Of course, we were gonna talk about Dark Stores!)

Dark stores are synonymous with distribution centres that only cater to online shopping. Technically just a large warehouse to facilitate immediacy in terms of service.

• Zepto, a Mumbai-based startup, recently raised $100Mn in a Series C funding, at a $570Mn valuation. Their tagline promise is to deliver groceries in under 10 minutes.Zepto’s success lies in the feat of ‘Dark Stores’ across the country.

They were one of the first to jump onto Dark Stores in India. Q-commerce has been the talk of the town with Swiggy & BlinkIt (formerly grofers) jumping right in with their 10-minute delivery promises.

Making logistics easier is the well-known key behind scaling any e-commerce business. No wonder a certain someone coined the term “Logisy” ( ‘logistic’ + ‘easy’ ) to stress the importance of it all.

• Bombay Shaving Company’s (Funding raised: $17.7 Mn) COO Deepak Gupta said, “D2C is based on data science. Design team's performance is measured both on aesthetics & click-throughs backed by consumer insights, same goes for supply chain”.

• Zlade, a personal care brand, whose MoM revenue grew 300% in 2021 due to its focus on sorting its supply chain.

• Similarly, Licious solved their supply-chain concerns to show a revenue stream of ₹1,000 Cr over their valuation.

• FabAlley’s (Funding raised: $18.7 Mn) CEO says “In fashion especially, supply chains are extremely fast. So, data analytics becomes key to figuring out the product lines that are moving - to assess and account for customers' buying patterns and more.”

• XYXX adopted an omnichannel strategy from its early stage for staying in touch with its consumers and getting regular feedback. And the results suggest that more and more D2C brands will follow the omnichannel invariably to keep up.

And now, brands like Peesafe, Mamaearth, and Wow Skin Science are following suit.

• Sustainability

Becoming an ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) Complaint organization might be ambitious, but the earlier you start, the better.

• 5G for live shopping & video commerce

700 million 4G users, 46% of them access online stores through browsers, and 54% through social media.

With 5G in 2022, the boost of online trends, basically around live shopping & video commerce are expected to be the aiding factors in beating China.

• Going Headless

Basically means the front-end and the back-end will be separated, creating ample room for flexibility and endless configurations.

Perfecting this allows one to operate the e-commerce store with distributed servers regardless of location through a mere click.

• AI-powered e-commerce platform

Artificial intelligence is already generating actionable insights and guiding recommendations into opportunities for exponential growth in revenue.

Understanding your business through a data-driven process and adding automation to it is the final goal of AI-powered integration & optimization.

That’s the end of our talk on 'The Empericals of D2C - FY21'...

See you on the next coffee date!

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