D2CX Converge Indore Decodes The New Playbook For Building Enduring Consumer Brands

India’s consumer brand ecosystem is entering a new phase, where scale is no longer measured by online reach alone but by a brand’s ability to build lasting customer relationships, operate efficiently across channels, and deliver sustainable profitability. 

The opportunity continues to expand rapidly. According to Inc42’s D2C 3.0: The Next Big Wave In Indian Ecommerce Report 2026, India’s ecommerce market is projected to grow from $165 Bn in 2026 to $450 Bn by 2031. Over the same period, the country’s D2C economy is expected to surge from $65 Bn to $310 Bn, accounting for nearly 86% of the incremental ecommerce GMV generated during the next five years.

But as India’s D2C ecosystem matures, the playbook for building successful consumer brands is evolving just as quickly. Growth at all costs is giving way to disciplined execution, with founders increasingly prioritising omnichannel expansion, customer retention, operational efficiency and sustainable unit economics over vanity metrics. In this environment, learning directly from operators who have successfully navigated these challenges has become more valuable than ever. 

Against this backdrop, Inc42, in partnership with Shadowfax, hosted the Indore edition of D2CX Converge, its founder-first meetup series designed to bring together consumer brand builders for candid, operator-led conversations on scaling modern D2C businesses.

The evening brought together more than 50 carefully curated founders and operators from across the consumer ecosystem, creating a high-trust environment where conversations extended well beyond networking to practical insights on brand building, inventory planning, capital allocation, customer retention, and profitability. 

The event featured conversations with some of India’s leading consumer brand builders, including: 

• Ananda Dasgupta, VP, Growth & Revenue, Shadowfax
• Anuj Nevatia, Cofounder, Bacca Bucci
• Mayank Beria, Founder, Bumtum
• Natasha Tuli, Founder & CEO, Soulflower
• Praharsh Chandra, Cofounder & CBO, Shadowfax
• Umar Akhter, Cofounder & CEO, Koskii

Inside Koskii’s ₹250 Cr+ Omnichannel Growth Playbook

The fireside chat, themed ‘Inside Koskii’s ₹250+ Cr Omnichannel Growth Playbook’, featured Koskii’s Akhter in conversation with Shadowfax’s Chandra. Reflecting on Koskii’s evolution from a legacy ethnicwear retailer to a ₹250 Cr+ omnichannel brand, Akhter unpacked the company’s approach to product innovation, merchandising, inventory planning, fundraising, and building a scalable retail business. 

A key theme of the discussion was how Koskii built its merchandising engine by combining decades of retail experience with technology. While fashion is often viewed as an intuition-led business, Akhter argued that relying solely on instinct becomes increasingly difficult as brands scale. Instead, Koskii has built an in-house technology stack that analyses years of sales data to identify winning designs, optimise inventory and improve decision-making across thousands of SKUs. 

“I’ve been in this business for more than 30-35 years. I still can’t predict what you people will like… I’ve decided not to predict. So what we very simply do is… you keep infusing it with new designs… and the beauty of what we have done is we have built an entire tech stack that does only that for us,” he said.

The conversation also touched upon Koskii’s fundraising philosophy and why the company prioritised profitability while steadily investing in its operational capabilities. Akhter said the company focused on strengthening its team, technology and execution engine before raising external capital, ensuring it could deploy fresh funds efficiently once it reached the next stage of growth.  

“Think about your car as your venture and think about funding as fuel… you need a solid engine that can move fast for you to put a lot of fuel into it… at the point where we said, ‘If we had ₹50 Cr today, I would have built 50 stores confidently,’ that’s when we raised,” he said.

Throughout the session, Akhter stressed that enduring consumer brands are built through disciplined execution rather than chasing scale alone. From investing in technology and data-driven decision-making to building the right organisational capabilities before pursuing aggressive expansion, he argued that strong operational fundamentals remain the foundation of long-term success. 

The ₹100 Cr D2C Brand Playbook

The panel discussion brought together founders from fashion, beauty, personal care and baby care brands to unpack what it takes to build and scale consumer businesses beyond the ₹100 Cr milestone. Moderated by Shadowfax’s Dasgupta, the conversation explored channel strategy, capital allocation, organisational evolution, and the operational decisions that shape long-term growth. 

Speaking about distribution strategy in an increasingly omnichannel world, Soulflower’s Tuli argued that brands should prioritise customer convenience over maximising margins through owned channels. Rather than trying to force customers onto brand websites, she said founders should focus on winning consumers wherever they choose to shop.

“The convenience of customers has always been more important to us… Rather than diverting on your website, just divert customers from other brands to your brand first. It doesn’t matter where they buy from,” she said.

The discussion then shifted to fundraising, where Bacca Bucci’s Nevatia cautioned founders against viewing capital as a milestone in itself. According to him, external funding should be considered only when it enables businesses to unlock opportunities they cannot pursue otherwise, rather than as the primary objective of building a startup. 

“Capital should be raised only when your business needs it… If you really feel that there is some massive opportunity which you are losing because you don’t have enough capital today… that is only when I feel you should raise,” he said.

Meanwhile, Bumtum’s Beria highlighted how a founder’s role must evolve as businesses scale. While early-stage companies are largely founder-driven, he argued that sustaining long-term growth requires institutionalising the organisation, building experienced leadership and creating systems that can operate independently of the founder. 

“A 0 to ₹50 Cr company is more of a founder-driven company. ₹50 Cr to ₹200 Cr is somewhere a team-driven company. But post that, it should become a system-driven company,” he said.

A common theme emerged across the discussions: building a large consumer brand today requires far more than acquiring customers. Whether it is resilient distribution, disciplined capital allocation, strong organisational systems or operational excellence, India’s next generation of consumer brands will be built by founders who focus on execution as much as ambition. 

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