Will Focus On Brand, Marketplace-Led Growth In The Initial Phase: TMRW Cofounder

TMRW, the ‘house of brands’ business of the Aditya Birla Group, intends to focus on the brand and marketplace-led growth in its initial growth phase, its cofounder and CEO Prashanth Aluru said at Inc42’s ‘The D2C Summit 3.0’.

Aluru was speaking at a session, ‘TMRW Playbook For Building The House Of Brands’, during the summit.

According to him, the fundamentals don’t change with the sales channels. “While our approach is digital-first, in the initial journey of brand’s growth, we will focus on brand.com and marketplace-led growth, but over time, omnichannel and offline will also be important,” Aluru said. 

He also said that there is a right time and place for going offline. While there’s nobody better than Aditya Birla Fashion to understand the complexity of offline, the idea is not to go offline in a rush and take the digital-first mindset to scale up the business, he added.

“(Then to) look at a flywheel between D2C and marketplace and overtime a flywheel between D2C marketplace and offline. We don’t see offline for us as a distinct sales channel but as a brand-building exercise and building trust and overtime as a flywheel where one channel feeds into and that creates a large brand,” he commented.

Earlier this year, Aditya Birla Group launched TMRW to back new-age digital businesses. TMRW is looking to create a portfolio of fashion and lifestyle brands by acquiring and incubating over 30 brands in the next three years, the company said at the time of the launch.

Despite acting differently than native D2C brands, the house of brands are contributing to India’s D2C sector, which is expected to be worth $100 Mn by 2026. 

The house of brands and ecommerce roll-up concept is gradually gaining traction in India with the presence of players such as GlobalBees, Mensa Brands, among others.