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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.

It’s been a month’s gap since the last post. With marketplace sales about to kick off in a few days, we thought it was the right time to get going again. News about funding in the D2C space has reduced to a trickle but that doesn’t mean that the sector is not alive and kicking. There have been multiple new launches across companies, marketplaces have seen revenue growth across categories, investments into logistics and warehousing are on the up and everyone wants a part of the e-commerce pie (including the government).

🗞️Marketplace Updates

• Amazon omitted any reference to India in Q1 2023 quarterly earnings and investor call, a notable change for the e-commerce giant that has consistently highlighted rapid growth and a bullish outlook in India.

  Amazon has poured over $7 billion into its India operations over the last decade! Amazon’s revenue from international markets, outside North America, was up just 1% YoY at $29.1 billion in Q1 2023. Overall, Amazon’s revenues rose 9% YoY to $127.4 billion in Q1 2023.

  • Meanwhile, Amazon Prime subscription price has been increased in India. Check out the new prices here.

  • Meanwhile, Meanwhile, Amazon's Ad revenue has increased 21% year-over-year to $9.5 billion

• Nykaa has a new leadership team. The beauty retailer has appointed 14 top executives across technology, finance, business, product, and marketing to drive the next phase of growth. This comes at a time when competition is gearing up to take on Nykaa in its core verticals. Rising competition is not Nykaa’s only worry. A cocktail of lukewarm consumer sentiment, concerns around its fashion foray, the implication on margins, and a hammering of its stock price appear to have created the perfect storm for the company.

• Myntra has rolled out a vernacular search feature. The feature now live on the Myntra app allows users to also shop in their native languages further enabling the ease of discoverability and shopping on the platform. Languages that users can shop in include Telugu, Kannada, Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, Marathi, Gujarati, Odia, Punjabi, and Assamese. In addition, the platform also supports searches typed in 'Hinglish'

• JioMart has expanded its seller base by 56% on a Q-o-Q basis. The e-commerce platform focused on catalogue expansion and strengthened the option count to widen its offering by 34% Q-o-Q across categories.

• Govt wants main platforms to come to ONDC, not new e-comm apps for joining. The ONDC platform is still in the early stages of evolution with 5000 orders a day. How this pans out in the coming months will be an interesting journey given how the government wants the platform to grow and how the ecommerce ecosystem players want to integrate into it.
  

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🍕D2C Bites

• Boundless Brands, a digital-first beverages brand with a full-stack e-commerce platform for the F&B industry, has raised $2.5 million in a seed round. The Gurugram-based company will launch dozens of beverage products this summer to cater to the underserved beverages market for the millennials and GenZ in India who account for more than 50% of the total $100 billion F&B market.

• Posh Stuff: Men’s luxury fashion brand Louis Stitch has raised Rs 5 crore in a pre-Series A. The company currently deals in luxury shoes and leather accessories and plans to launch luxury apparel series of polos, shirts, and trousers in the coming months. The company said that it has shown a year-on-year growth of 3X and has created a sourcing route of high-quality material from Argentina, Russia, Egypt, and Germany.

• QuickReply.ai raises $1.14 million in seed funding for the WhatsApp marketing tool. With the funds, the startup aims to help brands personalise their WhatsApp marketing campaigns and improve customer engagement by automating processes. QuickReply.ai’s technology helps brands to send personalised messages, automate conversations, and segment audiences, all in one platform.

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📢Leader Speak

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

Reads and Recommendations 📚

• E-commerce Discounts & Coupon Ideas

• Transportation cost savings via “live swaps,” in which home deliveries and returns happen simultaneously

• 4 Types of Artificial Intelligence & What Marketers Are Using Most

• Gen-Z Loves Dupes. Copycat products have shaken up the beauty industry as young consumers eat up inexpensive alternatives hawked on TikTok

That’s all for this week! Bye!

Stay tuned for more.

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