Customer Has Always Been The Source Of Truth For Us: Country Delight Cofounder

The direct-to-consumer (D2C) space has been gaining traction in India for the past few years now. While there are many puzzles that D2C brands still need to solve in India, consumers remain at the heart of any D2C brand, Chakradhar Gade, cofounder and CEO of Country Delight, said at Inc42’s ‘The D2C Summit 3.0’.

“A customer has always been the source of truth for us from day one in our business. We have been super obsessive about customer feedback and iterating on customer feedback,” Gade said during a panel discussion on the topic ‘0 To 1000: Scaling Up Your D2C Brand’.

Shankar Prasad, founder and CEO of D2C beauty brand Plum; Aakash Anand, founder and CEO of Bella Vita Organic; and Balu Ramachandran, chief business officer of Simpl, were the other speakers on the panel.

According to Gade, consumer feedback is one of the biggest strengths of being in a D2C business, especially for those with a B2C website or a D2C app of their own. While building a business can be tough, D2C brands can keep working on whatever inputs they get from their customers.

“We were bootstraped from 2013 to 2017 for the four years of our existence. And during those four years, all we did was just listen to customer feedback and keep iterating and iterating and iterating on it,” he commented.

The journey started with getting the product, service or tech experience right from an app point of view. After that, Country Delight started working on communication, he said, adding that the dairytech startup kept working on solutions for many layers of problems based on customer feedback.

Earlier this year, Country Delight raised $108 Mn in its Series D funding round led by Venturi Partners and Temasek at a post-money valuation of $615 Mn. The startup said it would utilise the funds for geographical expansion, enter new product categories and deepen its existing product portfolio.

A recent survey of 50 D2C brands by Inc42 found that 50% of brands in India have an omnichannel presence. Brand awareness remains the most significant challenge for D2C brands in India, and 63% of Indian D2C brands have leveraged influencer marketing.

Currently, over 50K brands are active in the Indian D2C market, which is expected to become a $300 Bn opportunity by 2030, according to an Inc42 report.