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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.

The inimitable Indus Valley 2023 Report by Blume is out, and as always, some really interesting insights there. Starting with 👇

The funnel of paying users is pretty narrow. Seen from this lens the TAM for e-commerce is limited (for now).

According to the report, the easy gains for e-commerce are done. It will take a lot more to get users to transact online. With Jio in the arena hopefully a new set of users can be brought aboard. Despite a per-capita income of ~ 2K, India’s online share of retails is 7%. Globally ecommerce penetration was 14% of retail with China at 46% and USA at 36%. Other interesting data points include, Verse ( Dailyhunt+ Publicvibe+ Josh) having more MAUs than Meta in India and the fact that the 18 million Indian diaspora abroad remitted over 100B USD last year (that’s more than the FDI the country received🤯)

🗞️Marketplace Updates

• On a Roll: Speaking of new users for e-commerce, Shopsy already accounts for 40% of Flipkart’s new customers. Flipkart’s value-shopping app Shopsy has been downloaded 140 million times. With more than 75% of its items priced below Rs 300, Shopsy clocked over 8.5x year-on-year growth in app downloads, becoming India’s third-most downloaded app last year, per Sensor Tower.

• Adding to that, Half of Myntra's beauty product orders now come from Tier-2 and 3 cities. The firm said that its growth rate has been 2-3x that of the online market this year. It is scaling up its operations to tap the BPC market, which is expected to grow to $38 billion by 2028. The selection available on Myntra Beauty has grown 3x since 2020. It now has over 1,400 brands on the platform with more than 75,000 products

• Amazon is looking to reposition its business as a one-stop shop for all consumers' daily needs and not just the occasional, one-off special purchases. Check out their latest ‘Aaj kya khareeda’ campaign.(nicely done)

  

  • Meanwhile, JioMart has kicked off its Holi sale with a series of ads in its ‘Bura mat maano’ campaign. Check out the campaign videos here

• Blinkit is set to launch Urban Company-like services. The company is launching handymen services on its platform soon. Blinkit has set up a new team of existing group’s employees as well as hired workforce from other companies to launch this new vertical

🍕D2C Bites

• Acquisition Machine: D2C enabler Razorpay has had an eventful FY2022. Its total revenue for fiscal 2022 jumped 75% to Rs 1,485.7 crore from Rs 844.6 crore. FY22 is also the second consecutive profitable year for the company. Of the total 7 buyouts, four deals took place in 2022 alone. This includes Curlec, Malaysian-based recurring payments firm; Izealiant, Pune-based banking technology company; Ezetap, POS payments solution provider; and PoshVine, loyalty and rewards management company. 

• D2C enabler, Bangalore-based automated inventory planning SaaS startup Crest raised INR 6.5 crore. Launched in March 2022, Crest is an automated inventory planning tool, designed to help D2C brands and SMBs in eliminating stockouts. Crest seeks to assist brands in maintaining their financial stability by implementing efficient inventory practices to optimise their working capital.

• Shark Tank Update: Till week 8 of Shark Tank India season 2, all the sharks have invested a total of rupees 66.71 Cr combined. Check out all the investments in season 2 here

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📢Leader Speak

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

Reads and Recommendations 📚

• Caratlane’s turnaround story

• Another comeback story. This time it is Shoppers Stop [paywall]

• Amazon is leaning into virtual influencers to engage younger consumers

• Self-coup, rage farming, petfluencer, nearlywed, hellscape. Explore new terms and meanings just added to Dictionary.com.  

Lunchboxes Too!🍱

Besides the overwhelming response to the bento-boxes last week, we got a ton of queries about lunch boxes. Here’s a range of the latest from Pinnacle (again? yeah, we love the brand). Make your office lunchtime look super cool with these lunch boxes. Grab one for yourself today!

That’s all for this week! Bye!

Stay tuned for more.

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