Hello! 👋

D2C Pulse is a newsletter written by the team at GlobalBees, curating happenings in the direct-to-consumer ecosystem of India.

A Very Happy New Year to everyone. We took a long break to recharge D2C Pulse. We thought things would cool down a bit in the D2C ecosystem at the year's end. It was anything but that. 🤯

PhonePe is no longer a Flipkart company - The Whole Truth raised $11 million USD - Mamaearth filed its IPO papers, there was a huge furore and then came a clarification from the founders - Amazon took an $8 Billion loan and now has a power trading license in India.

Here’s the round-up on the 1st week of 2023.

What’s sizzling hot? 🔥

The sharks are back with season 2 of the Shark Tank and along with them, a fresh flurry of memes. The content game of this content game is max! Here’s a list of all the pitches in season 2 complete with who got funded/rejected/passed on, the amount invested, and equity diluted.

sharktank.india

A post shared by Shark Tank India (@sharktank.india)

While the series is doing great to rev up the ecosystem (most of the pitches are from D2C brands), it has also opened up an interesting set of questions. We tried finding out how the season 1 contestants fared - found this and this.

🗞️Marketplace Updates

• Flipkart starts offering after-sales services for home products on its app. The after-sales services will be delivered by Flipkart’s service arm, Jeeves, which provides end-to-end post-purchase service solutions to consumers and businesses. These services will be available for all home products, irrespective of whether they were purchased from Flipkart or not.

• Amazon to lay off around 1,000 staff in India. The company has announced the elimination of over 18,000 roles across the globe due to uncertain economic conditions

• After establishing itself as a leading grocery player across formats, BigBasket is planning to open 400 stores over the next three years. All stores will come up in tier 1 cities. After testing waters in Bengaluru over the last few weeks, the company is now expanding to Hyderabad and Kolkata.

• Tata is looking to consolidate all e-Commerce business under Tata Digital. Tata Digital will become the sole entity of all online shopping ventures under the Tata Group. It already houses BigBasket, Tata Neu and Croma.  The consolidation will now be completed after Tata decided to transfer the holding of Tata UniStore, which owns and operates the e-commerce platform Tata Cliq, to Tata Digital Meanwhile Mukesh Bansal has reportedly stepped down from the helm at Tata Neu

• Swiggy outpaced Zomato with higher revenue and scale in FY22. Zomato’s revenue from food might be marginally higher than that of Swiggy’s, but the latter has surpassed overall scale through its increased focus on grocery delivery. Even as Zomato and Swiggy are said to be neck and neck in competition through the years, Swiggy is larger in scale with respect to overall revenues by over Rs 1000 crore.

🍕D2C Bites

• Rural commerce startup VilCart raises $13M in Series A round. The company helps village kirana stores easily procure inventory and manage logistics and supply chains.

• MetaMan, a men’s jewellery brand, announced the acquisition of new-gen affordable luxury jewellery brand Drip Project for USD 1 million. This strategic acquisition will augment MetaMan’s presence in the growing market of men’s online jewellery business in the country.

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• Mamaearth has been in the news lately due to the IPO filing. However, enough has been debated (and clarified) about this. Instead, check out these takes:

  • Mamaearth’s necessary yet costly love affair with retail stores.

  • Mamaearth’s Identity Crisis: Offline-First Or D2C & Digital-First? 

  • A lot is riding on Mamaearth's Street debut for FMCG Inc

Reads and Recommendations 📚

• How was 2022 for leading D2C brands in the USA?

• A great piece on India’s evolving landscape of ecommerce marketplaces

• Brands jumping in on the Blinkit-Zomato collab

• 10 minute tweaks to boost your conversion

• Google Search Trends through the year

  

  Simon Kuestenmacher @simongerman600

  Let’s quickly relive 2022 through Google Search Trends.

  

  12:10 PM ∙ Jan 2, 2023

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  2,097Likes460Retweets

🚩Poll Call

How’s SEO working out for your D2C website?

Need Help Kickstarting Your 2023 Fitness Goals?

The folks behind those awesome Tennis Racquets have launched a ton of nutrients in the Indian market- proteins powders, nut butters, electrolytes and BCAA. Here's the link for getting you loaded up on nutrients: http://bit.ly/3WRfJ5y

Use Coupon Code: HEADFIRST50 and get an additional 30% discount on the already discounted prices. (basically, it's a steal!) Valid Till: 15th Jan

That’s all for this week! Bye!

Stay tuned for more.

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