👩‍🏫Miscalculating TAM

Audio Loss, Woman Power, More ICs

Hi Surgies 👋(and a special welcome to all the folks from the VC community joining us)

Modern Trade growth in India during Q2 has slowed down to 3.2%, compared to 24% a year ago. Even General Trade growth has slowed down to 5%. A key reason cited is the shift to online platforms (quick-commerce). Meanwhile, DMart’s shares slipped by 9% as brokerages attributed some of the fall to quick commerce.

🗞️Marketplace Buzz

• Nykaa’s September AGM had some interesting insights

  • Online BPC market in India is where China was in 2007

  • Ecommerce penetration, as a % of total retail sales @15-19%, is almost half that of China… and much more

    

• Never a dull moment in the quick commerce space these days

  • Nykaa — piloting 10 min BPC products delivery in Borivali in Mumbai

  • Licious — piloting 15 min meat delivery in parts of Gurgaon

  • Swiggy — launched 10 min food delivery service called Bolt

  • Zomato — piloting 10 min food delivery options from select restaurants (* live in BLR at least)

  • Reliance Retail — piloting 10-15 min delivery starting with groceries from 3K of its stores (using its logistics business called Grab)

  • TikTik Shop — launched in BLR recently, ~30 min fashion delivery

• Woman Power: Flipkart is bringing in more women into the workforce, specifically in male-prevalent areas like last-mile delivery and warehouse operations. Flipkart said that among the blue-collar workforce it has hired for this festive season, there is a 24% growth in women hired compared to the Big Billion Days (BBD) sale event in 2023.

• Quick Commerce category breakdowns by the good folks at Sellerapp are quite insightful. Have cup of chai to enjoy this. If chai’s not your thing, take a look at other categories like - ice cream, dry fruits and wireless earbuds

• Purplle has closed its Series F funding round at Rs 1,500 crore (approx $180 million). Founded in 2012, Purplle operates with two models: a marketplace and its own brands, including Faces Canada, Good Vibes, Alps Goodness, Carmesi, and DermDoc. Its online platform reaches over 10 million consumers monthly, alongside 20,000 offline touchpoints. Purplle’s revenue in FY24 was Rs 680 crore with a loss of Rs 124 crore.

• More ICs: Amazon wants more individual contributors! The company announced that it will eliminate about 14,000 manager positions globally to increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by at least 15% by the end of Q1 2025. Amazon reportedly acknowledged that it has “added a lot of managers” recently and believes “now is the right time” to make this change. Every team has been told to review their structure, and it's “possible” that some roles may be eliminated.

🍕D2C Snippets

• All’s well that ends well: The Good Glamm Group has fully acquired personal hygiene brand Sirona, valuing the company at Rs 450 crore ($60 million). This comes after months of settlement negotiations between the two parties. In April, Indian Angel Network (IAN), an investor in Sirona, sent a ‘notice of default’ to the Good Glamm Group board, alleging it defaulted on its final payment obligations to the acquired company's shareholders. Sirona closed fiscal 2024 with a revenue of over Rs 100 crore. After being backed by Good Glamm, Sirona made a few acquisitions- Impower (2022) and Bleu (2023).

  

• Audio Loss: BoAt saw its topline fall by 5% to Rs 3,122 crore ($371 M) in FY24 from Rs 3,285 crore ($391 million) in FY23 courtesy of de-growth in the headphones arm and price cuts in the wearables business amid a slowing overall market. The good news - losses narrowed by 47% to Rs 53.5 crore ($6.3 M) in FY24, from Rs 101 crore ($12 million) in FY23.

• Save and Spend: Digital gold app startup Jar enters ecommerce with its D2C jewellery brand Nek. The startup, founded in 2021, allows users to invest in gold via its platform. Apart from direct daily, weekly and monthly investments, it ties up with UPI payment apps to round up amounts and invest the change from UPI transactions in gold.

📢Power Talk

"A macro trend that we are very bullish on is women joining the workforce. The last two decades have seen the trend of women in education. And next two decades, the women in the workforce are going to be a mega trend, which is going to shape multiple categories," Varun Alagh, Co-founder, Mamaearth.

📚Reads and Recommendations

• 🕹️Walmart is rewiring its e-commerce strategy with generative AI. This includes adding a nutty chatbot to manage customer service to selling Walmart goods on gaming platform Roblox.

• 🎖️What it means that Google racked up 3 Nobel Prizes. Three Nobel winners announced this week in chemistry and physics hail from the tech giant.

• 💸India’s largest cash exit for a founder may not be in consumer tech or fintech, but 3,500 Cr bakery Theobroma.

  

• 📢Say these words and people will buy anything from you. If your product or service isn't selling, it's not because there isn't demand or you don't have enough credibility. It's because you aren't packaging it as an irresistible offer.

• 🙅‍♂️Miscalculating TAM: Monetising SEA consumers at scale has been challenging. According to Lightspeed, one of the greatest miscalculations in SEA relates to the online consumer -"Almost all the region's monetizable users are in the top 20 cities and the lion's share of SEA's economic value is in its capital cities. Per capita averages can also be deceiving in SEA because income discrepancies between and within countries can vary significantly, and are skewed by the long tails of the uber-wealthy.”

That’s all for this week! Bye!

Stay tuned for more.

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