🥶Brain Freeze 🥶
Qcomm playbook, Pills to plywood, Ecommerce OS
🚀 "India looks very grand, very big from space."- Shubhanshu Shukla
This is what lift-off looks like.
While most of us were tweaking copy and chasing CTRs, Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla was suiting up for space. Just a man carrying 1.4 billion dreams into orbit. He packed carrot halwa, moong dal halwa, and mango juice- because even in space, India shows up with flavour.
And then, Earth responded… with matcha biryani.💔Because…. someone thought the best use of a superfood was to hijack India’s most loved dish. That’s not fusion, it’s a food crime.
Now onto this week’s D2C stories that actually deserve to trend 👇
🗞️ Marketplace Buzz
Walmart’s favourite child has scaled what it began 18 months ago - Flipkart is now a content company disguised as a commerce engine. Shoppable videos, creator studios, and livestream stunts (yes, phones being dunked live) are its new frontline weapons in the war against Amazon. 200M users, 17x spike in engagement- this isn’t a feature, it’s a creator-powered commerce engine. Founders, here’s your cue: static PDPs are fossils. If your product can’t stop the scroll, it’s already dead.
Swiggy says q-comm’s racing to $40B by 2030, up from $3.3B today. But this isn’t just a grocery play anymore. It’s beauty, pet care, home, health- anything with repeat and urgency is fair game. Swiggy’s Instamart isn’t planning on just defending turf- it’s launching in-house brands across categories to lock in margin and control.
While Blinkit and Zepto were busy speeding up deliveries, BigBasket was busy building moats. The Tata-backed OG didn’t blink when quick commerce exploded because it wasn’t just delivering groceries, it was quietly stacking shelves with its home-owned brands. BigBasket’s private label empire spans every aisle. And here’s the kicker: they were doing it before “dark stores” became the startup buzzword of the decade. Out of the INR 10,062 Cr in sales generated by the company in FY24, close to 40% came from the in-house and private label brands.
🍕 D2C Snippets
Forget pills, the ex-PharmEasy founders are now shipping plywood. Their new venture, All Home, just snagged funding from Bessemer at a $120M+ valuation to take on India’s chaos-ridden home improvement market. Modular kitchens, wardrobes, furniture- they're bundling it all into an omnichannel stack. Makaan is the new D2C battlefield, and this founding team is playing for keeps.
Banana chips, Tirunelveli halwa and murukku just got a term sheet with Indian Snack House raising ₹2.2 Cr from Titan Capital. They are clocking 1L+ packs/month by turning South Indian classics into a clean-label, pan-India snack storm.
Rabitat raises ₹40 Cr to turn toddler tableware into a ₹3.3B category win. Their play? Scale safe, non-toxic, design-forward kids’ food and drinkware, made from globally certified materials. Already chosen by 2L+ families, Rabitat now wants to own India’s ₹27,000 Cr kids tableware segment by building trust, design, and solid supply roots. Probably just the first baby steps towards category grab.
After four years of running its online store, ITC just shut it down. Not because D2C failed, but because Blinkit, Instamart, and Amazon are doing it better. With online sales via these platforms growing 50% YoY, the FMCG giant is ditching control for conversion. “The purpose has been served,” says ITC. Brand love doesn’t matter if distribution is lost.
Skippi ice cream just raised ₹12 Cr in an extended pre-series A to turn brain freeze into brand recall. Armed with nostalgic flavours and Instagram-worthy packaging, they’re moving 1L+ packs/month through retail and D2C. From Kala Khatta ice pops to cornsticks, cream rolls, and Crazy Corn, Skippi’s product play is heating up while keeping it cool.
Quick commerce is crashing the fashion party, and Zilo just RSVP’d with $4.5M from Nexus and RTP Global. Founded by Flipkart and Myntra alums, their pitch: Gen Z doesn’t do delivery windows- they want that crop-top now. With 15-minute fashion drops- built for impulse and powered by ops; q-comm in fashion isn’t a gimmick anymore- it now means fulfilment speed, not trend cycles.
Neeman’s is done playing it light. It now wants to hit ₹400 Cr in 2 years, and it’s not waiting for online CACs to cooperate. The plan? Go full throttle offline with 100 exclusive stores, push retail-first categories, and cover tier 1 & 2 India. Neeman is wearing the right shoes for the long walk from digital darling to serious offline play, backed by tighter supply chains and a sharper retail mix. Founders, D2C may start online, but if scale’s the goal, your store count better match your ambition.
Wakefit’s IPO pitch is tight, it’s got the revenue, the categories and the banker. The IPO plans to raise ₹468 Cr, marching to the bourses with ₹971 Cr revenue in 9 months of FY25, ₹76 Cr EBITDA, and a lean ₹9 Cr loss.
Binny Bansal just backed ShopOS with a $20M investment, calling it the “Android of e-commerce.” The startup, founded by ex-Scapic and Flipkart Labs leads, promises a full-stack operating system for online retail- powering everything from catalogues to campaigns, across India, UAE, and Europe. If ShopOS nails automation, this is the next era of brand scale: your AI is your co-founder, not just your dashboard.
📢Power Talk
“At this point, the quick commerce market is headed towards a $30 Bn to $40 Bn size in three to five years. That size can support more than two players, but it is unlikely that it can support five to six players.” Sriharsha Majety, Co-founder, Swiggy
📚 Reads & Recos
Kalaari’s new report calls it- horizontals built the habit, but verticals are now owning the experience. Think try-before-buy fashion, content-led beauty, and 90K-SKU food menus- all delivered in 30 minutes. From Slikk to Swish, the new players are designing for margin, not mass.
Blume’s q-comm handbook drops the ops truth: growth dies on empty shelves. This isn’t another glossy playbook, it’s a founder-built field manual from Plush, Perfora & GobbleCube, and it's brutal where it counts. SKUs are either Movers, Drainers, or Dead Weight, and if you can’t tell which, the algorithm already has.
Meanwhile, here’s a familiar story that many D2C founders can relate to on the qcomm front.”We’ve sent lacs worth of food products with expiry dates , and no visibility on their return.”
Check out this beautiful article about Shopify’s journey- About 20 years later, Finkelstein is now president at Shopify, but was one of the first merchants to start selling on this very platform. He recalls it was an “aha moment” that pretty much changed his life.
That’s all for this week! Bye!
PS: Folks at some companies have told us this newsletter is almost mandatory weekly reading for their teams 🥰. If your company is not in on it yet, get your teams on the latest in the e-commerce space every week
always looking forward to it