The pandemic has majorly affected startups around the globe. It has entirely changed the perspective of consumers towards brands and the marketplace. Consumers are widely preferring well-established brands and raising great concern towards hygiene, sanitation, convenience, quality and health.
In these times, the Direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands are gaining great profit and upraise in the market. On this note, tons of conventional brands such as LG, Havells, Ajanta-Orpat and Piaggio picked up the D2C model and applied it in their business.
Brands across the globe are shifting towards the D2C business model, removing the middle source. These brands are launching their native stores so that consumers could directly contact them. In India, D2C startups are running to a great extent.
However, in pandemics, these D2C brands suffered as well. As the D2C brand’s investment rate declined by 69% as compared to previous records. Meanwhile, the total funding was raised around $117.6 million throughout the year.
The D2C brands from all sectors including home decor, fashion & cosmetics, FMCG and electronics experienced advancement in numerous aspects. In this article, we have listed the top 24 D2C brands in India. Let’s get started!
What Is a D2C Business?
How Does the D2C Business Model Work?
Advantages of D2C Business
Top D2C Brands in India
What Is a D2C Business?
D2C brands are companies that build their offering around direct digital marketing channels as opposed to selling through an online marketplace, retailer, or auction site. D2C business model in India eliminates middlemen to reach the end consumers and thus saves a lot of costs spent on distribution.
How Does the D2C Business Model Work?
In the D2C model, Any seller or manufacturer willing to sell his products directly to his customers can set up an online website or store and promote the products on various social media platforms. This business model completely eliminates the middleman.
A study revealed that around 55% of consumers prefer to buy products directly from a brand or manufacturer’s website rather than retailers and distributors. This is a benefit for D2C brands in India and gives them an edge over conventional methods that involved middlemen.
Advantages of D2C Business
Increase in Sales
As more and more consumers are finding it convenient and reliable to buy products from the manufacturer’s website, it assures a rapid increase in sales.
Understanding Consumer’s Needs
Establishing a direct relationship with consumers enables the companies to clearly understand their needs and in turn, personalise their experience so that they visit their store again.
Cost Reduction
When the company is self-sufficient in reaching its customers, it negates the role of any third-party distributors who earlier had to be paid.
Diverse Catalog of Products
Now that the companies do not require a physical area for selling their products, they can sell from a diverse catalogue of products, enabling them to offer extensive variety to attract customers.
Top D2C Brands in India
1. Bombay Shaving Company
Bombay Shaving Company is a prominent men’s grooming brand based on the D2C model. This is one of the leading D2C brands in India. Bombay Shaving Company is the first-ever personal care brand that fulfils all the requirements of the consumers, globally. The Company was founded by Shantanu Deshpande in 2016 and is headquartered in Delhi NCR.
Today, Bombay Shaving Company have over 2 million users and has around $3.4 billion market value.
2. Mamaearth
Mamaearth is a well-distinguished brand that received huge customer engagement and loyalty. As the consumers are putting generous efforts into fulfilling personal care needs, Mamaearth made its appearances over all the e-commerce websites such as Amazon, Flipkart, Firstcry and Nykaa, which resulted in the company with huge profitable deals.
The users are widely preferring Mamaearth for their skincare and that’s why the company grew a huge consumer base. The revenue of Mamaearth has increased by around 3 times from the last 2019 records.
3. The Moms Co.
The very amazing personal healthcare brand for mothers. The Moms Co. sells personal care products, for all purposes like mom and baby care and postnatal, certified toxin-free by Australia. Its products are available on all e-commerce as well as physical shops. And its major source of revenue directly comes from its selling. The Moms Co. holds a market value of $6.5 billion.
4. Plum
Plum is an organic omnichannel clean beauty brand. Plum has experienced great profit since the consumer shift to the internet. The brand holds a value of around $23 billion by the year 2022.
Plum’s team size has heightened twice that of actual and catering of over 250M+ consumers per month.
5. Loom Solar
LOOM SOLAR is a D2C startup, a manufacturer of Solar Panels and Lithium batteries in Renewal Energy space based out of Faridabad, Haryana. It is founded by two brothers Amol and Amod (Ex- Schneider, Airtel) in 2018.
The Company helps Home Owners to reduce electricity bills in urban areas, while in small towns, it helps consumers to have 24X7 electricity by putting solar panels and Energy Storage Systems on the Rooftop
Recently, it reached a milestone of powering 50,000 homes from Solar Power across India.
Pooja Uniyal
6. Wakefit
During the pandemic, people have put immense concern and time into the style of their houses. And for this, the innovative sleep & Home Furniture Solutions Startup has experienced extensive growth. As of 2019, Wakefit had revenue of INR 80 crore and by the time of 2023, it has targeted up to INR 10,000 crore.
7. Wow
Wow is a widely famous skincare pharmaceutical D2C brand founded by Arvind Sokke and Ashwin Sokke; Manish Chowdhary and Karan Chowdhary. Wow is a total of $50 million worth of business.
Wow has its products in over 5,000 stores and pharmacies across India.
8. Sugar
The immensely growing beauty and makeup startup, Sugar Cosmetics was founded in 2015 in India. Sugar Cosmetics mainly targets women between the age of 18 to 25. Today, it has more than 2500 retail locations in over 130 cities across India. Its products are easily available at Lifestyle, Health & Glow, Shoppers Stop and NewU.
9. BoAt
BoAt is a very famous and distinguished electronic lifestyle company that provides stylish and high-quality electronic devices, at reasonable prices. BoAt’s products are available on every e-commerce website including Amazon and Flipkart. The company sells over 10,000 products every day and has more than 20 million users in India.
10. Noise
Noise is a D2C startup with a duo partnership with Chinese manufacturers to develop smartphone cases and sell them in India. Noise has a total revenue of INR 430 crore.
Pratyusha Srivastava
11. Licious
Licious is a distinct meat and seafood d2c brand that provides absolutely clean fish, eggs and meat. The company runs on a farm-to-fork model and provides its customers with the highest quality and totally fresh meat and seafood.
Licious has over 3500 employees and receives millions of orders every month. Its customer base is over 1 million.
12. Sleepy Owl
The cold-brew coffee brand, Sleepy Owl caters for the demands for brewed and epicurean coffee across India. Sleepy Owl has numerous outlets in different cities and also, many online channels for selling its amazingly flavorful brewed coffee.
13. Country Delight
Country Delight is a leading startup for supplying fresh and pure milk at the doorstep of customers. It runs on the D2C business model and refers to consumers immediately.
Country Delight improves the wholesome practice of Indian farmers and pays the price before its date in order to beat the competitors.
14. Pepperfry
Pepperfry is known to be India’s biggest and very famous online furniture startup. It provides furniture, kitchen equipment, bath, housing and dining appliances. Today, the startup has over 3.5 million active users and more than 5 million visitors per month.
Pepperfry holds over 20 studio locations across India and 500+ vehicles for delivering the furniture consumer’s houses.
15. Healthkart
Healthkart was founded by two IITians: Sameer Maheshwari and Prashant Tandon in 2011. This D2C brand offers great quality fitness products and assistance to help the consumer in attaining their fitness purpose.
Healthkart offers customers to order fitness products online as well as from offline stores. Its products are available in over 110 offline stores in 40 cities across India.
PV Vyshnavi
16. Lenskart
Lenskart is known as the biggest organised eyewear brand in India. The company offers over 5,000 designs of frames and around 45 different types of personality lenses. Lenskart has over 600 outlets in more than 66 cities across India. Its revenue as of 2020 is INR 967 crore.
17. Melorra
The first-ever lightweight jewellery startup, Melorra, was developed by Saroja Yeramilli. Melorra is a Bengaluru-based leading D2C company in India that offers jewellery in a wide range at affordable prices.
Melorra is known as the biggest distributor of jewellery in India, which has delivered its jewellery in more than 1,700 towns.
18. Flatheads
Flathead is a prominent Indian footwear startup that offers very stylish as well as comfortable footwear, suitable for every occasion. Flathead was founded by Ganesh Balakrishnan and Utkarsh Biranda. It follows the D2C business model and has grown extensively.
19. Bewakoof
Bewakoof is a very popular clothing brand that widely targets the young generation in India. Bewakoof has over 10 million active users every month and has revenue worth INR 200 crores as of 2020.
Bewakoof generates ML models to optimise their customer’s accession channels and enhance broad customers’ accession costs.
20. Candes
Candes is one of the top D2C brands in India that recently raised its funding up to $3 million. Candes is a Delhi-based startup founded by Sandeep Agarwal and Vipin Agarwal in 2015.
The annual revenue of Candes is around INR 200 crore. And have sales worth INR 10 crore every month.
21. MyGlamm
MyGlamm has recently opted for the most intriguing way of reaching more consumers. It has adopted the lifestyle content platform POPxo, in order to enhance the digital reach and create the 3C funnel.
Today, the company has over 2 million active users. MyGlamm generally targets women between the age of 16 to 25 and through this, it has witnessed a growth in its revenue up to INR 200 Crore.
22. Zissto Sauces
Zissto Sauces is a Mumbai-based company that offers a selection of convenient, tasty, and authentic sauces. Launched by Kanhai Porecha in 2017, the company aimed to save cooking time, especially for bachelors and working couples.
Kanhai started Zissto after returning to India from the UK where he did his graduation. He said he wanted to introduce authentic and easy-to-go Indian cooking sauces.
Today, the brand sells 50,000 sauces bottles across Mumbai, Chennai, and online portals like Amazon and Flipkart.
23. Everpret
Everpret is one of the top Indian D2C brands. It manufactures and sells designer bags for working women. The founder, Yashas Alur, worked in a Bengaluru-based company before starting his own business. There, he noticed many women employees carrying more than one bag which was highly inconvenient that didn’t suit their work attires.
From there, the idea of redesigning workbags to fit all essentials seeded inside him. So he quit his job and raised funding of Rs 8 lakh for his idea from his former boss.
Yashas launched the Everpret website in January 2018 and started selling designer bags for working women that had enough room to fit all their essentials and also complimented their work clothes.
24. Super Smelly
Super Smelly is India’s first and only certified zero toxins personal care brand that offers products specially formulated for teenage skin. The company was launched by Dipali Mathur and Milan Sharma in 2018.
As the brand is still too young to have its own manufacturing setup, Super Smelly products are manufactured at third-party facilities located across other parts of India. However, R&D is done in-house. They only use fragrances that are completely free from any toxins and allergens. The product is effective and completely toxin-free as well.
Super Smelly is available across all major e-commerce channels. The brand also serves US and UK customers through Amazon. It is now witnessing a month-on-month sales growth of 70 percent.
Conclusion
The internet has brought people closer than ever before. Today, with the internet not just being a luxury for a few, but turning into every household commodity, we have seen the emergence of direct to consumer (D2C) brands in India and as a commerce model in the consumer arena. D2C Model is the future of Indian trade and retail.
FAQs
What are D2C brands?
Direct to consumer companies in India have created a new methodology for eCommerce success which is taking their products directly to their buyer. Direct to consumer is a term that means when brands sell directly to their end customers eliminating the role of retailer, distributor, wholesaler, or other outlets.
What are some of the top D2C brands in India?
MyGlamm, Wow, MamaEarth, BoAT, Bewakoof, Noise and Licious are some of the top D2C brands in India.
Why are D2C brands successful?
Most D2C brands are successful because they don’t have to share first-party data with retailers as they directly sell the products to consumers.
