Very Hard To Build A Brand On Quick Commerce: Innovist’s Rohit Chawla

Innovist founder and CEO Rohit Chawla believes quick commerce is not the best place to build a brand today.

“It’s very hard to build a brand on quick commerce,” said Chawla at Inc42’s ‘The D2C & Retail Summit’, pointing out that the space is still evolving and costly to operate. “Ecommerce has taken about two decades to find its place in India and is now fairly efficient. But quick commerce is still new.”

Chawla said that high operational costs for the quick commerce channel often get passed on to the brands. He added that platforms prefer stocking proven bestsellers, which limits opportunities for newer brands.

“To be listed, sellers must already be performing well on platforms like Amazon,” he said. “Even before launching a new product, you need to show success elsewhere. That helps maintain some kind of balance, but it’s tough for new entrants.”

Founded in 2018 by Chawla, Sifat Khurana, and Vimal Bhola, Innovist is a “house of brands” focussed on creating clean, science-backed personal care, skin care, and sun care products. It houses brands like Bare Anatomy, Chemist at Play, and Sunscoop. 

In FY23, the startup’s operating revenue stood at INR 39.3 Cr with a net loss of 16.6 Cr. It is yet to file its financials for FY24 and FY25. 

Talking about Innovist’s channel mix, Chawla said, “About 25% of our business comes through our own website. Another 25% comes from ecommerce platforms like Amazon and Flipkart. One quarter from quick commerce, and the rest is from offline channels, which we are still testing.”

However, Chawla expects quick commerce to play a bigger role going ahead. “What was just 10% of a small top line (quick commerce’s share in revenue mix) is now 25% of a much larger one. So, we see the business slowly moving away from the website as the main channel. Customers don’t want to wait 2 to 4 days for delivery anymore.”

Earlier today, Veeba founder and MD Viraj Bahl also shared a similar sentiment. According to him, while D2C and retail brands across sectors are chasing fast growth via quick commerce platforms like Blinkit, Zepto, and Instamart, brands are built through the general trade (GT) channel.