Thank You, Sponsors And Partners, For Making The D2C Summit 2022 A Success!

Last week, we concluded the third edition of India’s largest D2C and ecommerce conference, The D2C Summit 2022. The summit brought together some of the most notable investors, enablers, founders and leaders from India’s ecommerce industry to help brands master the art of building and scaling profitable ecommerce businesses.

Our 70+ speakers shared relevant hacks, explored actionable tactics and revealed their proven strategies to scale businesses through candid discussions, insightful masterclasses and in-depth fireside chats.

Across 30 sessions, 5,000 attendees engaged and interacted with the likes of Sandeep Murthy, partner at Lightbox, Kannan Sitaram of Fireside Venture, ONDC’s Shireesh Joshi, Viraj Bahl of Veeba, boAt’s Aman Gupta, Rage’s Bharat Sethi, The Moms Co.’s Malika Datt Sadani, FableStreet’s Ayushi Gudwani among many others. 

Notably, the D2C forum also provided attendees with a one-of-a-kind networking opportunity. As a result, more than 4 Lakh messages were exchanged between the speakers and participants and 1,100+ meetings were set up during the two-day event.

That’s not all! Ten lucky winners of The D2C Summit contest received the golden opportunity to exclusively interact with Bharat Sethi, founder and CEO of Rage Coffee on the second day of the summit. 

And none of this would have been possible without our partners and the enablers, who not only helped us successfully execute this conference but also played a key role in enabling and supporting India’s vibrant ecommerce ecosystem.

We would like to take a moment to thank them all!

Presenting Partner

Pickrr

Pickrr is a 3PL startup founded by Ankit Kaushik, Rhitiman Majumder and Gaurav Mangla in 2015. The Delhi NCR-based SaaS logistics provider caters to the large-scale logistics fulfilment segment. Its key offerings include distribution, sales return management, order tracking and shipping management solutions. 

In June 2022, 3PL player Shiprocket picked an 80% stake in Pickrr for a 200 Mn deal. Despite the acquisition, Pickrr continues to operate as a standalone entity, said Mangla in a previous conversation with Inc42. The startup is now aiming to expand its product portfolio and scale in new geographies, Mangla added.  

Apart from helping us execute the D2C Summit without a hitch, Pickrr’s CMO and cofounder, Majumder, also joined us for a panel discussion on ‘How Optimising CX Can Help D2C Brands 10X Growth’.

Pankaj Vermani of Clovia, The Ayurveda Co.’s Shreedha Singh and PwC India’s Prateek Sinha were also part of this panel.

In addition, Sandeep Dinodiya, CTO of Pickrr also held a masterclass during the event on ‘Navigating The Festive Rush: D2C Brands’ Guide To Ensuring Quality Delivery Experiences’.

Co-Presenting Partner 

BharatX

Founded in 2019 by Mehul Jindal, Eeshan Sharma and Shyam Murugan, BharatX is a fintech startup that allows consumer internet companies to offer credit to their users in the form of UPI credit, instalment payment or pay later options.  

The consumer credit startup provides embedded credit to consumer-facing platforms via its application programming interfaces (API) and software development kit (SDK). Consumers can also open a Khata or a digital account with BharatX to buy groceries and daily essentials on credit, pay later for food deliveries and more. 

The startup is backed by marquee investors such as Y Combinator, Multiply Ventures, Soma Capital, Java Capital alongside several angel investors.

Jindal from BharatX joined the summit for a panel discussion on ‘Automating Scale: How The Right Payment Partner Can 10X D2C Sales & User Base’. The panel also featured Priyanka Salot, cofounder of The Sleep Company and Kanishk Arya, COO of SleepyCat. The session was moderated by Aarushi Jain, associate director of PwC India.

Powered By

Cashfree Payments

Bengaluru-based Cashfree Payments is a payment solutions provider that enables Indian businesses to collect and make payments online. It was founded by Akash Sinha and Reeju Datta in 2015. 

The startup claims to empower more than 1 Lakh businesses with payment collections, vendor and wage payouts, instant loan disbursements, refund management and more. Its customers include companies such as CRED, BigBasket, Zomato, Ixigo, Delhivery among others.

During the summit, Manmeet Singh, senior director at Cashfree Payments joined us for a panel discussion on ‘Indian D2Cs’ Next Battleground: Managing Instant Gratifications & Redressals’. 

The panel featured Mohit Belani of Born Good, Jovita Mascarenhas of Bartisans and GlobalBees’ Damandeep Singh Soni. 

Delhivery

Gurugram-based logistics provider Delhivery was founded in 2011. Over the last decade, the company claims to have fulfilled more than 1.4 Bn orders across the country and built a nationwide presence across 18,000 pin codes.

Delhivery provides courier pickup, PTL (Partial Truckload), FTL (Full Truckload), cross-border deliveries and supply chain services among others. It claims to work with both large and small ecommerce companies, SMEs, leading enterprises and brands. 

Delhivery’s SVP of regional sales, Rohan Shanbhag joined Snitch’s Siddharth Dungarwal, Gaurav Zatakia of Flo Mattress, Happilo’s Vikas D. Nahar and Deepak Gaur of PwC India for a discussion on ‘D2C Brands’ Pathway To Victory: Logistics Cost Reduction Strategies To 10X Margins’.

Salesforce

San Francisco-based Salesforce was founded by Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, Frank Dominguez and Dave Moellenhoff in 1999. It is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform that aims to empower employees by uniting marketing, sales, commerce, service and IT teams in a single interface and helping them deliver seamless customer experiences. 

The company has a global presence across the Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and America. According to its website, Salesforce has worked with more than 150K companies globally including Godrej, CEAT, EdelWeiss, Hubilo and more 

Anuradha Tyagi, director (India lead) of retail and customer goods from Salesforce joined us for a panel discussion titled,  ‘Perfecting Your Venture’s Phygital Strategies For The New World Order’.

She was accompanied by Chaitanya Ramalingegowda, cofounder of Wakefit, Rahul Seth, cofounder of Burger Singh and Anurag Murali, head, D2C at FabAlley & Indya.

In Association With

BiteSpeed

BiteSpeed is a Delhi NCR-based SaaS startup, founded by Vinayak Aggarwal in 2019. It enables D2C brands to interact with their customers and sell their products via communication channels such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger using chatbots. 

The startup also helps ecommerce brands upgrade their marketing strategy through conversational commerce. According to reports, BiteSpeed is used by more than 1,500 Shopify brands across 50+ countries around the world. 

The startup is backed by First Cheque, Whiteboard Capital and angel investors including CRED founder Kunal Shah and Teachable founder Ankur Nagpal.

Aggarwal joined the summit for a masterclass on ‘D2C Brands’ Ultimate Guide To Drive 20% Sales From WhatsApp’.

CashFlo

CashFlo was founded by former Boston Consulting Group executives Ankur Bhageria and Dushyant Agarwal in 2018. It is a vendor discounting and financing platform that helps businesses automate their finance processes and manage cash flows. 

According to CashFlo’s website, it has worked with more than 50 Indian leading companies including Tata, Aditya Birla Group and Murugappa Group. CashFlo is backed by angel investors such as Jitendra Gupta from Jupiter, Amrish Rau from Pine Labs, Nitin Gokul Rajaram and Nitin Gupta from Uni.

Bhageria, who is the founder and CEO of CashFlo presented a masterclass on ‘D2C Brands’ Guide To Leverage AP Automation For Rapid Scale-up’ during the summit.

Freshworks

Founded in 2010 by Girish Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy, Saas company Freshworks offers a suite of customer management softwares. The software includes an AI-powered chatbot and messaging platform for customer support, along with call centre-based solutions for customer resolutions. In addition, it offers HRM solutions and marketing automation solutions, among other products.’

The tech platform joined the coveted unicorn club in 2018 when its valuation breached the billion-dollar mark. 

In the session titled, ‘Learnings From Freshworks: Global Startup Insights For The Indian D2C Market’, Mathrubootham spoke about the trends and opportunities for brands from a global lens. The session was moderated by Sandeep Murthy, partner of Lightbox. 

PayU

Naspers-owned PayU is a payment gateway solution provider with a global presence. According to its website, PayU operates in 50 countries worldwide and has a network of more than 4.5 Lakh Indian merchants. 

The fintech player allows merchants to accept payments in any market while providing them with a wide range of payment optimisation and security features via a single API. 

Shobhit Mohan, VP of brand and marketing at PayU India hosted a masterclass at the D2C Summit 2022 on ‘How To Prepare Your D2C Business For Sales Events’.