Not Entry Barriers, But Scaling Is A Challenge For D2C Founders: Plum’s Shankar Prasad

The number of direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands is rising in India as new opportunities have opened up for the entire ecosystem. While the entry barriers are very low, the main challenge for the founders is to scale their brands, said Shankar Prasad, founder and CEO of D2C beauty brand Plum, at Inc42’s ‘The D2C Summit 3.0’.

According to Prasad, entry barriers have almost disappeared as access to distribution is now more easily available. It has become easy to enter the market, he added.

“Today’s challenge is now scaling. So before one enters, they should understand what the scaling challenges are and what is the hypothesis to solve them,” Prasad said while speaking during a panel discussion on ‘0 To 1000: Scaling Up Your D2C Brand’. 

Chakradhar Gade, cofounder and CEO of Country Delight; Aakash Anand, founder and CEO of Bella Vita Organic; and Balu Ramachandran, chief business officer of Simpl, were the other speakers on the panel.

“The entrepreneurs today have access to a suite of services. As everything is streamlined, they can focus on cracking the customer core which will essentially differentiate brands going forward,” Prasad said.

He also added that the startups need to understand who the stakeholders in the game are while going offline. While the consumer definitely holds high importance, the retailer is also a key stakeholder. 

When a brand is starting an offline journey, it should first go to smaller geographies, start with small cohorts of consumers or geographies where the demand can come from, he said, adding that creating demand, even if it’s in one locality, is important.

A recent survey of 50 D2C brands by Inc42 found that 50% of D2C 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 and it is expected to become a $300 Bn opportunity by 2030, according to an Inc42 report.

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