Enablers Have A Key Role In D2C Ecosystem During Economic Slowdown: Huddle’s Sanil Sachar

Enablers have a key role to play in helping the D2C ecosystem during an economic slowdown or funding winter, said Sanil Sachar, founding partner at accelerator Huddle, on the second day of Inc42’s ‘The D2C Summit 3.0’.

“The short-term phase of the consumer ecosystem will be across enablers…be it in the specified areas of cold chain, smart warehousing, automating warehousing,” Sachar said, adding that a strong distribution system will require efficiencies in the back-end and front-end. 

In fact, as per him, the enablers for the D2C brands can revive the ecosystem and help create balance during the difficult phases.

The D2C ecosystem, which has been evolving at a fast rate in India, includes various enablers such as the logistics players, SaaS players, influencers, among others. 

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Abhishek Goenka, head and CIO at RPSG Capital Ventures, said that the logistics providers need to develop more infrastructure around Tier 2, 3 cities as these are the areas that would bring the next biggest set of consumers.

Besides Sachar and Goenka, other prominent founders such as Prasun Agarwal of A91 Partners and Kannan Sitaram of Fireside Ventures also participated in the session named ‘Riding The D2C Boom: Coping With The Ever-Evolving Funding Landscape’. 

The panelists discussed several other key points related to the D2C ecosystem in India including the next biggest trends, the overall funding environment, the winning products, among others.

Speaking about the next most important thing that D2C brands need to focus on, Fireside Ventures’ Sitaram said that it would be great to see more brands rooted in science, having more depth to them than just mixing different ingredients, having some genuine IPs and genuine science.

Currently, India has 346 funded D2C startups, with Mamaearth, Lenskart, Wakefit, MyGlamm, Plum Goodness, Noise, Bombay Shaving Company, and Melorra being some of the popular brands. 

Among various D2C brand segments, the FMCG brands have received the biggest amount of funding so far amounting to $2.1 Bn, followed by the fashion category, as per Inc42’s analysis.

In the first six months of 2022, the D2C startups raised $1.3 bn across 119 deals.

Inc42’s ‘The D2C Summit 3.0’, a two-day event, saw some of the most prominent industry leaders across D2C segments and the investor ecosystem speak about a wide range of topics pertaining to the challenges, opportunities, and future prospects of the D2C brands in the country.

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