With the total addressable market for D2C brands in India projected to skyrocket beyond $100 Billion by 2025, there is ample opportunity for existing D2C companies to expand and for new players to enter the thriving D2C eCommerce landscape. These brands encompass a range of structures, from founder-led ventures to those featuring creators as the face of the brand.
To gain insight into the future of D2C retail and creator commerce segments, we spoke with Bharati Balakrishnan, Country Head & Director at Shopify India & SEA. Our discussion delved into the potential of India's creator economy to propel retail opportunities, the untapped prospects for D2C brands in India, and what lies ahead for the dynamic world of D2C eCommerce.
Whether you’re a solopreneur, creator or existing business-owner, if you are planning to launch a D2C brand in 2023, this episode is a gold mine for you.
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Saikat Pyne: Hi. I'm Sekar marketer, creative and media nerd. Welcome to
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Saikat Pyne: the you incorporated podcast On this show, I catch up
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Saikat Pyne: with some of the most bad ass founders, business leaders
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Saikat Pyne: and content creators in the whole wide world. Whether you're
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Saikat Pyne: a marketer, creative or a budding founder, if you want
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Saikat Pyne: to build your brand your voice your way, you are
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Saikat Pyne: in the right place.
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Saikat Pyne: Join me on the you incorporated podcast and start building
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Saikat Pyne: your empire. Here we go.
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Saikat Pyne: Please join me in welcoming Bahati Balakrishnan, the country head
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Saikat Pyne: and director at Shopify India and Southeast Asia.
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Saikat Pyne: Bahay happens to be a former colleague. She is also
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Saikat Pyne: a leader in the consumer, Internet and commerce space. With
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Saikat Pyne: over a decade and a half of experience in building
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Saikat Pyne: and scaling both online and offline retail businesses, she has
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Saikat Pyne: held leadership roles at the Future Group ATM, the Alibaba
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Saikat Pyne: Group and local way. Welcome to the show, Hardy.
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Bharati Balakrishnan: Thank you so much for having us really excited to
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Bharati Balakrishnan: catch up with you and do this with you.
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Saikat Pyne: Lovely pail like, what is the biggest shift you've seen
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Saikat Pyne: in terms of creators and small scale Indian business owners
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Saikat Pyne: looking to digitise their business or monetize aspects
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Saikat Pyne: of their
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Bharati Balakrishnan: business. Yeah, these are very exciting time cycle, as you
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Bharati Balakrishnan: mentioned in a very generous introduction. Now that I've been
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Bharati Balakrishnan: at the world of e-commerce and retail and for a
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Bharati Balakrishnan: very long time,
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Bharati Balakrishnan: been a student of retail ever since the early two
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Bharati Balakrishnan: thousands and so much has happened in the world of
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Bharati Balakrishnan: retail in India ever since. Before we get to the
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Bharati Balakrishnan: creator economy, I'd like to focus on the second part
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Bharati Balakrishnan: of your question, which is around small business owners going online,
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Bharati Balakrishnan: and that is so closely tied to Shopify journey in India.
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Bharati Balakrishnan: So if you look back, I think very few
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Bharati Balakrishnan: people know that we actually have been in this market
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Bharati Balakrishnan: for over 10 years now. And the company itself is
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Bharati Balakrishnan: about 15 16 years old. And for the first five
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Bharati Balakrishnan: years cycle, this is up to leading up to 2015
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Bharati Balakrishnan: or so. We were really about a partner playground, right?
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Bharati Balakrishnan: We were about developers in India who helped brands go
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Bharati Balakrishnan: online globally.
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Bharati Balakrishnan: But starting 2015, when the car market got to this
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Bharati Balakrishnan: 10 $15 billion mark, I think when you and I
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Bharati Balakrishnan: were at ATM, we started seeing the first D to
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Bharati Balakrishnan: C brands take off in India, right? So these are
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Bharati Balakrishnan: the sugars. The boards have continued to grow with us
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Bharati Balakrishnan: today and become really home homegrown brands and home and
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Bharati Balakrishnan: every and household names. And I think between 2015 and
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Bharati Balakrishnan: 18 that was an organic progression to sort of India
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Bharati Balakrishnan: becoming a merchant market and then starting 2018. And I
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Bharati Balakrishnan: argued before covid
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Bharati Balakrishnan: obviously covid on steroids. We saw this tremendous period of
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Bharati Balakrishnan: growth in India on the merchant base and this merchant
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Bharati Balakrishnan: base today, when I look at it so it's grown
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Bharati Balakrishnan: over three x on merchant grown over four x on
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Bharati Balakrishnan: G M v. So they've not only become many, but
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Bharati Balakrishnan: they've also become bigger in the last three or four years,
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Bharati Balakrishnan: it's happened on a cow tax of two really important
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Bharati Balakrishnan: deal wins, right? What is the D to C side
00:03:28
Bharati Balakrishnan: and let's talk about that first. So we said that
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Bharati Balakrishnan: there were a lot of brands coming up, but what
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Bharati Balakrishnan: I think happened when the
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Bharati Balakrishnan: market hit 30 $40 billion annually in G. M. V
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Bharati Balakrishnan: online is even small categories, right? Started giving birth to
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Bharati Balakrishnan: new brands. So while earlier you saw DC brands or
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Bharati Balakrishnan: being born categories like Panel and Electronics. Now you saw
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Bharati Balakrishnan: categories like jewellery like Fitness accessories, right at leisure come
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Bharati Balakrishnan: up and very quickly get to the 50 60 100
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Bharati Balakrishnan: pro mark because this has become a meaningful channel. E-commerce
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Bharati Balakrishnan: itself the second table that we've seen
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Bharati Balakrishnan: traditional brands, What I call really established large brands that
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Bharati Balakrishnan: are household names that started offline have started taking their
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Bharati Balakrishnan: own channel very seriously, right? Their own website very seriously.
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Bharati Balakrishnan: They recognised during covid cycle that their marketing spend moved
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Bharati Balakrishnan: from offline to online. They moved from TV to YouTube,
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Bharati Balakrishnan: for example. They realise that all discoveries happening online, regardless
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Bharati Balakrishnan: of where sales are right. So earlier you would see
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Bharati Balakrishnan: a hoarding on a road at a signal and then
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Bharati Balakrishnan: walking
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Bharati Balakrishnan: into a store. Today you see a holding. You google it,
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Bharati Balakrishnan: you find the website, you go through what's in the
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Bharati Balakrishnan: store near you and then you make a decision to
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Bharati Balakrishnan: walk into the store. So the entire brand experience of
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Bharati Balakrishnan: discovery is predominantly online, and that created a big tailwind
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Bharati Balakrishnan: for us. A Shopify. Now, when you take one step
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Bharati Balakrishnan: forward into what's happening with the creator economy. I think
00:04:51
Bharati Balakrishnan: two baseline facts really excite me. OK, Number one is
00:04:56
Bharati Balakrishnan: we are now
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Bharati Balakrishnan: country of 708 100 Internet users, right, 800 million Internet
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Bharati Balakrishnan: users and about 100 million shoppers, Right? So there's always
00:05:05
Bharati Balakrishnan: all this conversation about. Are the next 100 million shoppers
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Bharati Balakrishnan: going to shop the same way as the first? And again,
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Bharati Balakrishnan: if you go back to how retail has worked in India,
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Bharati Balakrishnan: it's never been about one channel. It's never been about
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Bharati Balakrishnan: one format. When Big Bizarre first started in the early
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Bharati Balakrishnan: two thousands, it started growing. Everyone thought, Oh, we're going
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Bharati Balakrishnan: to abandon the kid on our stores
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Bharati Balakrishnan: That happened. No, you and I still shop at the
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Bharati Balakrishnan: Kira stores. We now shop at a big basket or
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Bharati Balakrishnan: a blanket or a or a swi. We also shop
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Bharati Balakrishnan: at a big bazaar or Spencer's and so on, and
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Bharati Balakrishnan: we also then shop at the local Kira. Similarly, with online,
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Bharati Balakrishnan: there's gonna be so many different ways in which people shop.
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Bharati Balakrishnan: And I think creators have a huge role to play
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Bharati Balakrishnan: there because of the second fact. The second fact is,
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Bharati Balakrishnan: I believe that consumers spend time
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Bharati Balakrishnan: is where they're gonna spend their money, right? And if
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Bharati Balakrishnan: you think about where we all spend our time, we
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Bharati Balakrishnan: are all spending it on various points of discovery on
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Bharati Balakrishnan: Instagram on WhatsApp on YouTube. And that's where we're eventually
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Bharati Balakrishnan: going to end up spending our money, right? And so
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Bharati Balakrishnan: that gives me a lot of excitement for how creators
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Bharati Balakrishnan: are going to play a role in commerce going forward
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Bharati Balakrishnan: and create new retail formats that we never imagined maybe
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Bharati Balakrishnan: even five years back.
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Saikat Pyne: And what would these formats look like?
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Bharati Balakrishnan: I think there's a bunch of exciting things happening right,
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Bharati Balakrishnan: and we feel like demand is increasingly fragmented. So as
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Bharati Balakrishnan: an example today, if you started a DJ C brand today,
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Bharati Balakrishnan: you would start with your website typically on a platform
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Bharati Balakrishnan: like ours. But you would also then integrate the WhatsApp
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Bharati Balakrishnan: sales channel that we've introduced and use that to talk
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Bharati Balakrishnan: to a curated audience that has started following you right
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Bharati Balakrishnan: would send them a collection.
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Bharati Balakrishnan: And so the five s skills that you see from
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Bharati Balakrishnan: me as a brand is different from what your friend
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Bharati Balakrishnan: sees on WhatsApp. You could also then step into YouTube
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Bharati Balakrishnan: and go beyond not just showcasing content in terms of
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Bharati Balakrishnan: brand stories, but actually build. Use the YouTube shopping plug
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Bharati Balakrishnan: in to run a storefront right on your channel or
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Bharati Balakrishnan: tag products while you do a live stream. I'll give
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Bharati Balakrishnan: you an example of one of our merchants. Rasti Saris,
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Bharati Balakrishnan: who ships a lot of
00:07:12
Bharati Balakrishnan: is abroad, right? And the founder herself is an influenza,
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Bharati Balakrishnan: and she really the craftsmanship, the beauty, the draping of
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Bharati Balakrishnan: a sari, how you do it right? And she is
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Bharati Balakrishnan: so passionate about it as a founder, and that really
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Bharati Balakrishnan: comes through now. She started as a merchant and is
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Bharati Balakrishnan: also a creator. Today you would have to think about
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Bharati Balakrishnan: in the future which one's going to come first and
00:07:31
Bharati Balakrishnan: how the lines are blurring. Really. So I would say YouTube, WhatsApp,
00:07:35
Bharati Balakrishnan: live streaming, really joining What should I say?
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Bharati Balakrishnan: Online shows where you discover new products, new merch That
00:07:42
Bharati Balakrishnan: is very in the moment, but you watch a football
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Bharati Balakrishnan: match yesterday, the World Cup's on, and something about a
00:07:47
Bharati Balakrishnan: moment that was created becomes merged today. That maybe 1000
00:07:51
Bharati Balakrishnan: creators who are known for, let's say, speaking about sports content,
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Bharati Balakrishnan: put it out right and that merch sells 10 t-shirts
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Bharati Balakrishnan: of this one player. Let's say right, this could happen
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Bharati Balakrishnan: and it's happening in parts of the world already.
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Saikat Pyne: What does this then mean for the future of creator
00:08:09
Saikat Pyne: and a brand relationships? Then does this mean that
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Saikat Pyne: the Creator is going to be even more intrinsically linked
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Saikat Pyne: with a certain brand?
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Bharati Balakrishnan: Yeah, absolutely. I feel like there are a couple of
00:08:22
Bharati Balakrishnan: lines that are blurring in the world of retail, right?
00:08:25
Bharati Balakrishnan: I always joke that post the pandemic we don't really
00:08:27
Bharati Balakrishnan: discuss online and offline, really as being the separate entities,
00:08:31
Bharati Balakrishnan: which used to be a lot of discussion before. Hopefully
00:08:34
Bharati Balakrishnan: we killed that debate. The second debate I kill is
00:08:37
Bharati Balakrishnan: around who is red
00:08:38
Bharati Balakrishnan: of custodian of the brand, right? I think that's changing
00:08:41
Bharati Balakrishnan: so dynamically for various brands and the role of, let's Say,
00:08:45
Bharati Balakrishnan: a celebrity. For example, if you think about journeys of
00:08:49
Bharati Balakrishnan: who really have built their own brands today, five years
00:08:52
Bharati Balakrishnan: back it was an endorsement relationship, right, so you wouldn't
00:08:55
Bharati Balakrishnan: have fixed income for endorsing a certain brand, and you
00:08:58
Bharati Balakrishnan: would try depending on who you were for it to
00:09:00
Bharati Balakrishnan: resonate with what you stand for. And then it became
00:09:03
Bharati Balakrishnan: about celebrities taking equity, uh, ownership in brands and then
00:09:08
Bharati Balakrishnan: playing their part and hopefully enjoying the upside. We saw
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Bharati Balakrishnan: a bunch of that happen with Nico, for example. And
00:09:13
Bharati Balakrishnan: now we're seeing celebrities launch their own brand and just
00:09:17
Bharati Balakrishnan: launched her brand a couple of weeks back, and that's
00:09:19
Bharati Balakrishnan: becoming very mainstream. And it's really harnessing their own own
00:09:23
Bharati Balakrishnan: following in a better way and going beyond ad revenues
00:09:26
Bharati Balakrishnan: into commerce revenues and into a
00:09:28
Bharati Balakrishnan: a relationship that is also more strategic and more meaningful.
00:09:31
Bharati Balakrishnan: If you look at like the long tail of creators,
00:09:34
Bharati Balakrishnan: it's really about building your audience in one place and
00:09:37
Bharati Balakrishnan: then finding different ways to monetize it, one of which
00:09:40
Bharati Balakrishnan: is commerce, right? So I'll give you an example. Today
00:09:43
Bharati Balakrishnan: we have what is called a startup plan in India
00:09:45
Bharati Balakrishnan: from Shopify that just costs like a 399 a month. Right.
00:09:49
Bharati Balakrishnan: With that, you can get a custom storefront set up,
00:09:53
Bharati Balakrishnan: and you are in business, right? And so if you
00:09:55
Bharati Balakrishnan: are a celeb, if you are a creator who's gotten to,
00:09:58
Bharati Balakrishnan: let's say, the 30 mark, uh, following and let's say
00:10:02
Bharati Balakrishnan: you're ready Endorse music. It could be a quote from
00:10:05
Bharati Balakrishnan: a song that you put on a t-shirt and sell,
00:10:07
Bharati Balakrishnan: and you probably sell five or 10 orders a day.
00:10:09
Bharati Balakrishnan: And that's a new income stream. Could be a link
00:10:11
Bharati Balakrishnan: of a particular product that you put out on Link Po,
00:10:14
Bharati Balakrishnan: which is another associated
00:10:15
Bharati Balakrishnan: product that we offer right off the bat that lets
00:10:17
Bharati Balakrishnan: you direct your social audience to buy your product. And
00:10:21
Bharati Balakrishnan: then it could also be that you then collaborate with
00:10:24
Bharati Balakrishnan: other brands or other creators to sell for each other, right?
00:10:28
Bharati Balakrishnan: So this is happening in so many ways it could
00:10:30
Bharati Balakrishnan: be brand to creator. It could be brand to brand.
00:10:33
Bharati Balakrishnan: It could also be created to creator. And then finally,
00:10:35
Bharati Balakrishnan: everyone is speaking to the audience as well.
00:10:39
Saikat Pyne: Let's dial it back. We were speaking about how a
00:10:42
Saikat Pyne: new generation of entrepreneurs are being enabled to be able
00:10:47
Saikat Pyne: to come up with brands of their own. Thanks to
00:10:50
Saikat Pyne: platforms like Shopify, the tech barrier to entry is lost,
00:10:54
Saikat Pyne: thanks to platforms like Shopify.
00:10:56
Saikat Pyne: What's your take on how renews can grow their own
00:11:00
Saikat Pyne: D two C brands?
00:11:01
Bharati Balakrishnan: Yeah, I'm very excited personally for that because your passion
00:11:05
Bharati Balakrishnan: today can become like a side hustle tomorrow and can
00:11:08
Bharati Balakrishnan: become your livelihood day after right? This is actually possible.
00:11:12
Bharati Balakrishnan: But to get through these steps and actually get to
00:11:15
Bharati Balakrishnan: the Holy Grail, if you will. I think it's very
00:11:16
Bharati Balakrishnan: important to think of this in three steps, and you
00:11:18
Bharati Balakrishnan: rightly pointed Step one, which is the tech stag. I
00:11:21
Bharati Balakrishnan: think the tech has become incredibly simple to
00:11:24
Bharati Balakrishnan: day, and it's not just the commerce tack you start with,
00:11:27
Bharati Balakrishnan: which is someone like Shopify. But it's also what you
00:11:29
Bharati Balakrishnan: do with it in terms of payments in terms of
00:11:31
Bharati Balakrishnan: logistics who you plug into based on that your audiences,
00:11:34
Bharati Balakrishnan: for example, the YouTube shopping sales channel that we have,
00:11:37
Bharati Balakrishnan: or the WhatsApp sales channel, and so on and so forth.
00:11:40
Bharati Balakrishnan: So definitely getting the tech out of the way is
00:11:42
Bharati Balakrishnan: tech number one. We always see it. Shopify brand. We
00:11:45
Bharati Balakrishnan: know tech, right? But the second step is very important
00:11:49
Bharati Balakrishnan: and something that a lot of brands I see falter at,
00:11:51
Bharati Balakrishnan: Which is the
00:11:51
Bharati Balakrishnan: ops, right? The operations of it and what does that
00:11:54
Bharati Balakrishnan: really mean? That means figuring out How do you manufacture product?
00:11:58
Bharati Balakrishnan: How do you stock it in a warehouse. How do
00:12:00
Bharati Balakrishnan: you price it? How do you ship it? And then
00:12:02
Bharati Balakrishnan: how do you handle customer service and feedback? The good
00:12:05
Bharati Balakrishnan: news is today a lot of this as well in
00:12:08
Bharati Balakrishnan: India has become a playbook, right? So today you could
00:12:11
Bharati Balakrishnan: figure out a beauty brand. Let's say that you want
00:12:13
Bharati Balakrishnan: to launch you. Can you go and go to the
00:12:15
Bharati Balakrishnan: manufacturers who will help you put it through all the
00:12:17
Bharati Balakrishnan: regulatory requirements that are needed?
00:12:19
Bharati Balakrishnan: They will manufacture it for you in small batches and
00:12:22
Bharati Balakrishnan: right from the factory. You could send it straight to
00:12:25
Bharati Balakrishnan: a warehouse and by the way, these could be three
00:12:27
Bharati Balakrishnan: or four warehouses across India that let you then ship
00:12:30
Bharati Balakrishnan: to a customer in less than two days. Which is
00:12:33
Bharati Balakrishnan: really what's becoming increasing the the customer expectation. Right? So
00:12:37
Bharati Balakrishnan: in this journey, what's happened, Skat is your warehousing cost
00:12:40
Bharati Balakrishnan: your ability to oversee that All of that has become variable.
00:12:44
Bharati Balakrishnan: And all of that has become like a service on
00:12:46
Bharati Balakrishnan: that
00:12:47
Bharati Balakrishnan: which is very valuable to single founder. Right? Gone are
00:12:50
Bharati Balakrishnan: the days when you have to sit in your little
00:12:52
Bharati Balakrishnan: go down by yourself. Pick, pack and ship yourself and
00:12:55
Bharati Balakrishnan: then figure out how much inventory to carry, how to
00:12:57
Bharati Balakrishnan: price it right? These are things you have to figure out,
00:12:59
Bharati Balakrishnan: but there's a fairly roiled engine at place to help
00:13:02
Bharati Balakrishnan: you do this right. You could go to the point
00:13:04
Bharati Balakrishnan: of outsourcing till it's delivered. Returned.
00:13:06
Bharati Balakrishnan: That warehouse, managed by an outsourced entity that you can
00:13:10
Bharati Balakrishnan: pay for payments itself, has been solved for a pretty
00:13:13
Bharati Balakrishnan: long time in India. I think we're a country that's
00:13:15
Bharati Balakrishnan: really embraced digital payments in a way that has probably
00:13:19
Bharati Balakrishnan: never been seen before in the world, so I would
00:13:21
Bharati Balakrishnan: then get to the third step. Having sold for one
00:13:24
Bharati Balakrishnan: and two, I would argue that a solar should ideally
00:13:27
Bharati Balakrishnan: spend 60 to 80% of their time on step number three,
00:13:30
Bharati Balakrishnan: which is really figuring out marketing and branding.
00:13:33
Bharati Balakrishnan: And when you think about solo products, I feel often
00:13:36
Bharati Balakrishnan: the founders, the brand and the brand is the founder.
00:13:38
Bharati Balakrishnan: In the early days when I meet entrepreneur,
00:13:41
Bharati Balakrishnan: it's usually something that started, especially in the early days,
00:13:44
Bharati Balakrishnan: right as a passion project, right? Something you feel strongly
00:13:47
Bharati Balakrishnan: about or you feel has is a unserved market need
00:13:51
Bharati Balakrishnan: and then it really imbibes your values as a founder.
00:13:54
Bharati Balakrishnan: And then that's the journey that gets you from 0
00:13:56
Bharati Balakrishnan: to 10 orders a day, right? 10 to 50 comes
00:13:59
Bharati Balakrishnan: from having your tech and ops in place and figuring
00:14:03
Bharati Balakrishnan: out broadly an identity and ability to execute that identity
00:14:07
Bharati Balakrishnan: across the various marketing channels. Right. So your ability to say, Hey,
00:14:10
Bharati Balakrishnan: this is what I stand for This is the key message,
00:14:12
Bharati Balakrishnan: and I know how to put it on a creative
00:14:14
Bharati Balakrishnan: and send it on a WhatsApp, put it up on
00:14:16
Bharati Balakrishnan: my instagram and put it on a let's say, a
00:14:18
Bharati Balakrishnan: Facebook ad, right? And then the journey from 50 to
00:14:22
Bharati Balakrishnan: 100 is really what starts to separate. What I said
00:14:25
Bharati Balakrishnan: where you go from, a side hustle to a livelihood,
00:14:27
Bharati Balakrishnan: right where you really step back and say, Hey, what
00:14:30
Bharati Balakrishnan: does this brand really stand for?
00:14:32
Bharati Balakrishnan: How am I shaping it? Was it What is it
00:14:34
Bharati Balakrishnan: today versus what is it? Tomorrow and then you start
00:14:37
Bharati Balakrishnan: making choices like that around, especially assortment and channel, right?
00:14:42
Bharati Balakrishnan: So while many D to C brands will start their
00:14:44
Bharati Balakrishnan: journey by being a website first, they then have to
00:14:48
Bharati Balakrishnan: make the hard choice of Hey, what are the channels
00:14:50
Bharati Balakrishnan: that makes sense for me? Should I be on Amazon
00:14:53
Bharati Balakrishnan: and flip card? Should I go offline and go to
00:14:55
Bharati Balakrishnan: general trade? Should I be available?
00:14:58
Bharati Balakrishnan: Modern retail like a lifestyle or a central? What is
00:15:01
Bharati Balakrishnan: that right mix for me? And the second is what
00:15:04
Bharati Balakrishnan: is the right balance of skews that really communicate my
00:15:07
Bharati Balakrishnan: brand but also make it operationally efficient and especially for
00:15:11
Bharati Balakrishnan: solos who are creators? I think this is a very
00:15:15
Bharati Balakrishnan: important choice. Increasingly, if you think about five years back,
00:15:18
Bharati Balakrishnan: a celebrity who or a person with a following who
00:15:20
Bharati Balakrishnan: decided to launch a brand would go out of the
00:15:23
Bharati Balakrishnan: traditional
00:15:23
Bharati Balakrishnan: right? Let's say a Bollywood actress decides to launch an
00:15:26
Bharati Balakrishnan: APP barrel brand. She would go and find the Hu,
00:15:29
Bharati Balakrishnan: do the typical brand stuff around a barrel. Have two
00:15:31
Bharati Balakrishnan: seasons on fashion, have 100 options put out, put it
00:15:35
Bharati Balakrishnan: in all the channels, et cetera. But today, if you
00:15:38
Bharati Balakrishnan: have a if you're a creator with, let's say a
00:15:39
Bharati Balakrishnan: following of 20 or 30, I would say go deeper
00:15:43
Bharati Balakrishnan: versus wider so you could be the guy that says, Hey,
00:15:45
Bharati Balakrishnan: this is the trend that is really working online. Let's
00:15:48
Bharati Balakrishnan: say that
00:15:49
Bharati Balakrishnan: the latest Sabu serial puts out a sari with a
00:15:52
Bharati Balakrishnan: certain border that is really trending. How are you going
00:15:55
Bharati Balakrishnan: to capitalise on that? And put out the five options
00:15:58
Bharati Balakrishnan: that then generate sales for you? I think learning that
00:16:01
Bharati Balakrishnan: game and making it part of your brand story and
00:16:04
Bharati Balakrishnan: how you build the business is very key. So those
00:16:06
Bharati Balakrishnan: are the two things that watch out for the channel
00:16:09
Bharati Balakrishnan: and your assortment strategy as you build your brand in
00:16:11
Bharati Balakrishnan: the in Step three. But
00:16:14
Saikat Pyne: what
00:16:15
Saikat Pyne: do you think is the future of the TT. C
00:16:17
Saikat Pyne: versus established brands play? And how is that going to
00:16:22
Saikat Pyne: play out into the future? Are the lines going to
00:16:25
Saikat Pyne: be defined or other lines going to be bloody generally?
00:16:30
Bharati Balakrishnan: Yeah, it's a great question, Saka. Then I feel like
00:16:32
Bharati Balakrishnan: too often we try to actually create more of a
00:16:35
Bharati Balakrishnan: distinction than I believe exists because the thing to remember
00:16:39
Bharati Balakrishnan: again in India, like we mentioned at the beginning, is
00:16:42
Bharati Balakrishnan: that multiple formats strike right. As a country, we are
00:16:45
Bharati Balakrishnan: very retail dense, and we're always exploring brands and exploring
00:16:49
Bharati Balakrishnan: neighbourhood stores as well as browsing online and spending so
00:16:52
Bharati Balakrishnan: much time online. So for me, the idea of D
00:16:55
Bharati Balakrishnan: to C brands in India
00:16:56
Bharati Balakrishnan: today, as I have learned, is really about starting online. First,
00:17:01
Bharati Balakrishnan: it has become easy to take your idea and translate
00:17:04
Bharati Balakrishnan: it to a business with your website, thanks to the
00:17:07
Bharati Balakrishnan: technos becoming as easy as we just described earlier, Right,
00:17:11
Bharati Balakrishnan: so it lets you get started. But eventually every good brand,
00:17:14
Bharati Balakrishnan: No matter whether you started 25 years ago with a
00:17:17
Bharati Balakrishnan: set of stores in one city in there, or because
00:17:20
Bharati Balakrishnan: you started with your own website today online,
00:17:23
Bharati Balakrishnan: you have to eventually find your audience and go where
00:17:26
Bharati Balakrishnan: your audience is. And if your audience is a mix
00:17:29
Bharati Balakrishnan: of online and offline, you got to do that. If
00:17:32
Bharati Balakrishnan: your audience is in premium neighbourhood communities in the top
00:17:35
Bharati Balakrishnan: 10 cities of India, that's where you should be. If
00:17:38
Bharati Balakrishnan: you're really engages on content and needs an app, that's
00:17:41
Bharati Balakrishnan: what you should do. And for each brand, that is
00:17:43
Bharati Balakrishnan: a happy mix of the channels that are available. I
00:17:46
Bharati Balakrishnan: think what just distinguishes these brands today is where they
00:17:49
Bharati Balakrishnan: start
00:17:50
Bharati Balakrishnan: are not necessarily where they reach full potential.
00:17:53
Saikat Pyne: Through that,
00:17:55
Saikat Pyne: the e-commerce has also blurred the national boundaries In terms
00:18:00
Saikat Pyne: of how consumers perceive deliver today on Amazon, you can
00:18:05
Saikat Pyne: order from anywhere in the world. There are multiple other
00:18:09
Saikat Pyne: e-commerce platforms, global orders are shipped
00:18:12
Saikat Pyne: and consumers just think, boss, as long as I'm able
00:18:16
Saikat Pyne: to get the best product for the best price, I
00:18:18
Saikat Pyne: really don't care. What will this mean for the future
00:18:21
Saikat Pyne: of D two C products created out of India or
00:18:25
Saikat Pyne: creators that are likely to be shipping Boch out of
00:18:28
Saikat Pyne: India to global audiences and global consumers?
00:18:32
Bharati Balakrishnan: Yeah, So this is a very exciting early trend we're
00:18:35
Bharati Balakrishnan: seeing about basically cross border from India and let me
00:18:38
Bharati Balakrishnan: start with a few statistics that really make me very happy.
00:18:42
Bharati Balakrishnan: One in five Shopify India Merchants now ships cloak, which
00:18:46
Bharati Balakrishnan: is quite a rise to what you
00:18:48
Bharati Balakrishnan: part of cross border even five years back. And they
00:18:51
Bharati Balakrishnan: ship on average to four countries or more. And the
00:18:53
Bharati Balakrishnan: ones that I see are most successful are typically those
00:18:58
Bharati Balakrishnan: that have built a premium brand offering for the Indian diaspora,
00:19:04
Bharati Balakrishnan: right, and the Indian diaspora is in every country right
00:19:08
Bharati Balakrishnan: outside India, and so that is a very attractive market,
00:19:11
Bharati Balakrishnan: especially in categories like lifestyle, fashion, home, et cetera. And
00:19:16
Bharati Balakrishnan: I see that growing every month. And the brand is
00:19:19
Bharati Balakrishnan: typically built on in anaesthetic Indian nostalgia and is really,
00:19:24
Bharati Balakrishnan: like a very good way to balance sort of catering
00:19:27
Bharati Balakrishnan: to premium consumers in India, as well as seeking out
00:19:30
Bharati Balakrishnan: this diaspora audience that is also pre
00:19:32
Bharati Balakrishnan: and global. And this would have been a very difficult
00:19:35
Bharati Balakrishnan: thing to do without online as a channel, right, because
00:19:39
Bharati Balakrishnan: the audience, perhaps in each market by itself is subscale.
00:19:43
Bharati Balakrishnan: But because you can now use folks like us to
00:19:45
Bharati Balakrishnan: just ship to 15 20 countries just off one inventory pool,
00:19:50
Bharati Balakrishnan: this all becomes very easy. So that is very exciting.
00:19:53
Bharati Balakrishnan: And when we put that in the context of the
00:19:55
Bharati Balakrishnan: creator economy, right, it goes back to the point of
00:19:59
Bharati Balakrishnan: where are these people spending their time
00:20:00
Bharati Balakrishnan: time? And would they be willing to spend their money?
00:20:03
Bharati Balakrishnan: So one of the big things that happens with cross
00:20:05
Bharati Balakrishnan: border is trust building right? It takes time to trust
00:20:08
Bharati Balakrishnan: that something that you order thousands of miles away is
00:20:11
Bharati Balakrishnan: actually something that's going to reach you, and that's where
00:20:14
Bharati Balakrishnan: how you build your brand, your following on social channels
00:20:18
Bharati Balakrishnan: and how you build that conversation with your eventual consumer
00:20:22
Bharati Balakrishnan: really matters. I see a lot of fashion designers do
00:20:25
Bharati Balakrishnan: this very well. I see a lot of New Age
00:20:27
Bharati Balakrishnan: brands do this very well,
00:20:29
Bharati Balakrishnan: and I do see that we are going to be
00:20:30
Bharati Balakrishnan: shipping a lot out of India in the future. I
00:20:33
Bharati Balakrishnan: hope that it goes beyond just the Indian diaspora and
00:20:36
Bharati Balakrishnan: the Indian aesthetic. I think one example of a brand
00:20:39
Bharati Balakrishnan: that we are very proud to showcase on Shopify that
00:20:41
Bharati Balakrishnan: has gone beyond that is rather, that really took the
00:20:44
Bharati Balakrishnan: story of tea in India and took it to the world.
00:20:46
Bharati Balakrishnan: And really, the consumer and consumer now is really country agnostic,
00:20:50
Bharati Balakrishnan: but those are still early, but I see a very
00:20:52
Bharati Balakrishnan: strong trend in this draw, and I would say creators
00:20:55
Bharati Balakrishnan: are very well placed to take advantage of
00:20:57
Bharati Balakrishnan: this because they are the best at building trust. Even
00:21:00
Bharati Balakrishnan: before a sale, it through
00:21:02
Saikat Pyne: that you spoke about fashion designers. The one category of
00:21:05
Saikat Pyne: product that doesn't need to be shipped are digital products
00:21:08
Saikat Pyne: and services. So to dial back to creators, what Would
00:21:13
Saikat Pyne: this mean for creators who are looking to monetize their
00:21:16
Saikat Pyne: personal brand through digital products and services? What are the
00:21:20
Saikat Pyne: couple of opportunities opening up for these people and the
00:21:23
Saikat Pyne: value that they will now be able to deliver to
00:21:25
Saikat Pyne: their fans or or just people who are likely to
00:21:28
Saikat Pyne: be their clients? Let's say, or somebody that they can
00:21:31
Saikat Pyne: that are likely to be prospective customers in some ways.
00:21:35
Saikat Pyne: Or what are some of the ways you foresee digital
00:21:37
Saikat Pyne: products and services
00:21:38
Bharati Balakrishnan: growing? Yeah, absolutely. I would argue, in fact, that a
00:21:41
Bharati Balakrishnan: bunch of categories in digital products are perhaps growing faster
00:21:44
Bharati Balakrishnan: or smarter than physical goods, right? Just because of their
00:21:47
Bharati Balakrishnan: ability to travel. I'm not as close to those industries,
00:21:50
Bharati Balakrishnan: but I do see education being a big.
00:21:53
Bharati Balakrishnan: And we've seen that with the white hats of the
00:21:56
Bharati Balakrishnan: world and many other folks offering classes online, I see
00:21:59
Bharati Balakrishnan: a lot of music and dance. Uh, that now happens
00:22:02
Bharati Balakrishnan: online and a bunch of other arts and again extending
00:22:05
Bharati Balakrishnan: to the similar audience right, that is buying I e.
00:22:07
Bharati Balakrishnan: The Indian diaspora. One other thing that I see it's
00:22:10
Bharati Balakrishnan: very early is many of our merchants, right were in
00:22:13
Bharati Balakrishnan: this category and speaking to this audience will also offer
00:22:16
Bharati Balakrishnan: quasi service classes, Right. So it could be that you're
00:22:19
Bharati Balakrishnan: selling puja items, for example.
00:22:21
Bharati Balakrishnan: But you could also then tell a simple booklet that
00:22:25
Bharati Balakrishnan: is WhatsApp to you or a simple video that talks
00:22:27
Bharati Balakrishnan: to how you do the puja, right? Or what do
00:22:29
Bharati Balakrishnan: you have to put together? So I see newsletters done
00:22:32
Bharati Balakrishnan: by merchants who are in these categories who will try
00:22:34
Bharati Balakrishnan: and take that forward content. And also he sell a
00:22:37
Bharati Balakrishnan: few digital products. But yeah, you're right that a lot
00:22:40
Bharati Balakrishnan: of digital services also travel cross border from India, and
00:22:43
Bharati Balakrishnan: we do have the power of being a strong English
00:22:46
Bharati Balakrishnan: speaking country
00:22:47
Saikat Pyne: that works I am and aspiring to see a founder.
00:22:50
Saikat Pyne: You spoke about the three things that I'd have to solve.
00:22:54
Saikat Pyne: Apart from those three things, what are some of the
00:22:56
Saikat Pyne: biggest mistakes that you've seen due to C brands making,
00:22:59
Saikat Pyne: except for service, branding and
00:23:03
Bharati Balakrishnan: data? That's a question I would actually say. There's one
00:23:07
Bharati Balakrishnan: important one that we can all avoid, which is assuming
00:23:11
Bharati Balakrishnan: that somehow a brand gets built faster online.
00:23:15
Bharati Balakrishnan: I think building is a long journey no matter where
00:23:19
Bharati Balakrishnan: you start,
00:23:20
Bharati Balakrishnan: and it's important to have patience and believe in why
00:23:24
Bharati Balakrishnan: you are differentiated. And it's important to know that you
00:23:27
Bharati Balakrishnan: may not have all the answers on Day one, and
00:23:31
Bharati Balakrishnan: then the story of a brand evolves till it gets
00:23:33
Bharati Balakrishnan: to a place where it can stand on its own feet.
00:23:36
Bharati Balakrishnan: I feel far too many brands die early in their
00:23:39
Bharati Balakrishnan: journey because they're in a hurry to hit sales numbers,
00:23:42
Bharati Balakrishnan: and those are not really brand stories survived many years apart.
00:23:46
Bharati Balakrishnan: Apart from that, I would say sometimes we over engineer
00:23:50
Bharati Balakrishnan: what we want to do in the early days. It's
00:23:52
Bharati Balakrishnan: OK to do things that are not scalable like us, right?
00:23:55
Bharati Balakrishnan: So pick up the phone as a founder and speak
00:23:57
Bharati Balakrishnan: to five consumers every day who are coming and looking
00:24:00
Bharati Balakrishnan: at you and not buying or who are buying and
00:24:02
Bharati Balakrishnan: learn from that experience. Yes, you won't be able to
00:24:05
Bharati Balakrishnan: do this when you're 1000 orders a day. Hopefully, you
00:24:08
Bharati Balakrishnan: still make the time for one call. But I feel
00:24:10
Bharati Balakrishnan: like far too many
00:24:12
Bharati Balakrishnan: folks are focused on what works at scale. The joy
00:24:15
Bharati Balakrishnan: of building a brand in the early days is actually
00:24:17
Bharati Balakrishnan: being very close to your consumer. So stay close to
00:24:19
Bharati Balakrishnan: the feedback and the exact I don't know if it's
00:24:22
Bharati Balakrishnan: a corollary to this is as you scale believe in
00:24:25
Bharati Balakrishnan: data more than the stories you hear right. You have
00:24:28
Bharati Balakrishnan: to build a muscle to read and connect the dots
00:24:31
Bharati Balakrishnan: across various pieces of data. So while you will do that,
00:24:34
Bharati Balakrishnan: you will make that one call a day. Even I
00:24:37
Bharati Balakrishnan: even if you
00:24:37
Bharati Balakrishnan: pay 1000 orders a day, which is pretty scale for
00:24:40
Bharati Balakrishnan: any brand, especially in India. I would always make the
00:24:43
Bharati Balakrishnan: time to make sure that I'm making decisions based on
00:24:45
Bharati Balakrishnan: the data. And that's where data C especially begins, right
00:24:49
Bharati Balakrishnan: versus other other channels. Because your data is yours. Your
00:24:53
Bharati Balakrishnan: consumer is telling you a lot. You could, for example,
00:24:55
Bharati Balakrishnan: launch products first on your website and see whether the
00:24:58
Bharati Balakrishnan: red is selling more than the yellow and then decide
00:25:01
Bharati Balakrishnan: how much you want to produce. You could
00:25:03
Bharati Balakrishnan: decide that. Hey, you know what I thought shipping in
00:25:06
Bharati Balakrishnan: two days would make a dramatic difference? Was the shipping
00:25:08
Bharati Balakrishnan: in three days? But the data doesn't really say that,
00:25:11
Bharati Balakrishnan: and you could reward and delight your customers of giving
00:25:14
Bharati Balakrishnan: you great feedback. You could send them a freebie, for example.
00:25:17
Bharati Balakrishnan: You could send them a hand written note. But really
00:25:19
Bharati Balakrishnan: looking at the data and then acting on it as
00:25:21
Bharati Balakrishnan: you grow up is an important skill that I think
00:25:24
Bharati Balakrishnan: we all know and internalise. But we find very hard
00:25:27
Bharati Balakrishnan: to action because
00:25:29
Saikat Pyne: true
00:25:30
Saikat Pyne: and my last question is going to be as we
00:25:34
Saikat Pyne: are in 2023.
00:25:37
Saikat Pyne: What are some of the emerging categories in D. T
00:25:41
Saikat Pyne: C retail that are likely to take up in a
00:25:44
Saikat Pyne: big way this year?
00:25:45
Bharati Balakrishnan: Oh, yeah, we do see a few new emerging categories.
00:25:48
Bharati Balakrishnan: I would say Health and wellness is one. I think
00:25:51
Bharati Balakrishnan: that is
00:25:53
Bharati Balakrishnan: been a rub off from the pandemic that's held on
00:25:55
Bharati Balakrishnan: another one. That's been a pandemic beneficiary, if you will,
00:25:59
Bharati Balakrishnan: is Home Improvement and Home Deck. I think it was
00:26:02
Bharati Balakrishnan: something that we didn't pay as much attention to. But
00:26:06
Bharati Balakrishnan: it's definitely become something that's more mainstream in our conscience.
00:26:10
Bharati Balakrishnan: We continue to see brands come up, and that's again
00:26:12
Bharati Balakrishnan: a great creator category where you really represent the deck
00:26:17
Bharati Balakrishnan: and then you carry it forward and really convert it
00:26:20
Bharati Balakrishnan: to merchandise and
00:26:22
Bharati Balakrishnan: a brand in a niche that really speaks to something.
00:26:24
Bharati Balakrishnan: The others we see are perhaps more expected or, I
00:26:28
Bharati Balakrishnan: think continues to. We continue to see a parallel footwear,
00:26:32
Bharati Balakrishnan: jewellery make AD,
00:26:34
Bharati Balakrishnan: and we're starting to see a bunch of small and
00:26:36
Bharati Balakrishnan: large appliances and f MC g also become very mainstream.
00:26:40
Bharati Balakrishnan: I would say that with F MC G and appliances,
00:26:43
Bharati Balakrishnan: they may or may not necessarily be large sales channels,
00:26:47
Bharati Balakrishnan: but they're very important from a discovery perspective, from a
00:26:50
Bharati Balakrishnan: brand story perspective in what they deliver on
00:26:54
Saikat Pyne: their DC. And on that informative note, it's a wrap.
00:26:58
Saikat Pyne: Thank you so much for being on the podcast. McCarthy
00:27:01
Saikat Pyne: really appreciated you taking time out.
00:27:03
Bharati Balakrishnan: Thank you for having me. Sa I enjoy catching up
00:27:06
Bharati Balakrishnan: with you again. And I really hope your audience enjoys this.
00:27:11
Saikat Pyne: I'm sure they will. Guys, please to tune in next
00:27:15
Saikat Pyne: week for the next episode of the U Incorporated podcast.
00:27:18
Saikat Pyne: See ya.
00:27:24
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00:27:29
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00:27:34
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