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

Live Commerce isn’t quite taking off the runway as it was expected.

This week Google-backed ShareChat scaled down its live commerce division. The company stated that live commerce is an important, long-term strategic bet for them, however, in the immediate term, they have ‘calibrated’ the budget outlay for this area.

Also, Instagram is killing live shopping in March and will focus on ads instead, this is following a similar shutdown on Facebook. The changes highlight the difficulties the U.S. market has had in making livestream shopping successful. China is looking at this trend in the eye. Apps like WeChat, Taobao Live and Douyin (China’s TikTok) have proven live shopping to be a popular endeavour and is is expected to bring in $423 billion in a year.

While a shoppable video collapses the sales funnel to zero and makes attribution crystal-clear, social media platforms in the country are finding it tough. It’s a different story for the e-commerce marketplaces though. (yeah, a twist in the tale).

Back in Sept 2022, Amazon Live kicked off and brought in an army of more than 150 creators to host livestreams and plug products into the videos. Flipkart is also testing a similar offering. Myntra too joined the party with the launch of M-Live. How the Indian audience laps up live streaming on marketplaces and will it drive transactions is yet to be seen.

🗞️Marketplace Updates

• Welcome Tira: Reliance joins beauty the gang by launching ecommerce beauty platform Tira, to compete with Nykaa, Tata Cliq Palette. Tira will offer makeup, skin and haircare, fragrances, bathing, men’s beauty and luxury items. Currently, in employee beta, the platform will be made live to public in early March

• Ayurveda Beauty Club: has another member. Nykaa launched another brand this week -Nyveda, an Ayurvedic beauty and wellness brand, marking the company’s foray into this trusted Indian science of holistic wellbeing. The inspiration for Nyveda’s recipes comes from ancient ayurvedic texts such as the Bhav Prakash Nigantu to deliver products that strike a harmonious balance between age-old wisdom and beauty rituals.

• Fintech arm of B2B e-commerce Udaan, UdaanCapital has facilitated disbursals of over ₹4,000 crore of working capital to over 2,500 MSME buyers in the last 24 months. Udaan Caital’s funding programme facilitates extension of working capital to the smaller buyers from Tier-2,-,3 and -4 cities.

• JioMart has stopped the operations of its quick grocery delivery service JioMart Express. The 90-minute delivery was shut down to rein in the costs. Quick commerce was an experiment run by the company last year. Looks like its time for a course correction.

• Quick Commerce Love: Blinkit delivered 10,000 single roses and 1,200 bouquets by 10 am on Valentines Day. The company also saw a huge uptick in perfumes, chocolates and condoms.

  • In other news, the company has rolled out a new feature to allow its partner brands to create micro-brand stores and promote their products in its app. The new feature, coupled with insights into sell-throughs and supply chain tools, gives brands a real-time view of their performance, both on the app and in different geographies.

🍕D2C Bites

• TenderCuts has launched its new venture HappyChops to enable local meat shops to list their products on the platform. The marketplace launched two months ago as a pilot project is currently present across 100 pockets in Chennai. The company aims to increase its reach to 10 cities in the next 2 quarters, with the focus being on Tier 2 cities

• Kalaari Capital has released its latest report on e-commerce in India. Some interesting data points:

  • India’s E-Commerce market is expected to hit $165B by 2025.

  • India’s D2C Market to be $50B in 2025

  • $15B will flow through the brand’s direct channel

  • Lots of stuff on D2C enablers and paths to building a large ecom business in India. Check it out here

• Not our best moment in the D2C ecosystem 😔. D2C brands are behind 84% of all objectionable personal care ads since FY2022. Social media influencers were responsible for 68% of the ads processed by ASCI in the personal care category, out of which 92% violated the ASCI Code and required modifications.

• Cremeitalia, a natural cheese brand, announced its foray into direct-to-customer business with its new website. It aims to penetrate the markets in Tier ll and Tier lll cities to make natural, fresh, and non-processed cheese available to everyone. Before the pandemic, 90 % of the brand’s business was with the HoReCa sector, raking in close to INR 25 L in monthly sales. Post-pandemic the business grew diverse with 40 % coming from the retail sector and 60 % from the HoReCa sector.

📢Leader Speak

Get the latest on what D2C Founders and Leaders had to say this week!

Reads and Recommendations 📚

• Amazon Takes a 50% Cut of Seller's Revenue as per a report in the USA. Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) fees have steadily increased. Amazon has raised fulfilment fees every year and introduced increases in storage fees.

  • Meanwhile in India, Amazon announces a 50% referral fee discount for some businesses

• How to Create An In-Store Experience in E-commerce. Check this out on how to build a digital shopping experience that makes customers feel like they are shopping in-store.

• Superbowl Ads. Here are the top 10.

• Amazon again. This time it’s the zen movement of robots in the fulfilment centres.

  

  Bryan Porter @jbryanporter

  We toured an Amazon Fulfillment center yesterday and… 🤯 Incredible. • Inventory is stored on constantly moving shelves. Robots take the shelf to the pick station. • Inventory is randomly placed on shelves, tracked by cameras (go store technology). • They spread inventory… https://t.co/aVZw8geSYM

  

  6:48 PM ∙ Feb 18, 2023

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