Good Morning,
YourStory's Brands of New India Mega Summit 2022 kicked off Friday with a stellar lineup of founders, business leaders, emerging entrepreneurs, and ecosystem enablers from across the country.
Ananth Narayanan, Founder and CEO, Mensa Brands; Vineeta Singh, Founder and CEO, SUGAR Cosmetics; Harshil Mathur, Co-founder and CEO, Razorpay; Bimal Kartheek Rebba, Co-founder, Trell; Nitin Agarwal, CEO, GlobalBees; Gaurav Mangla, Co-founder and CEO, Pickrr; Varun Alagh, CEO and Co-founder, Mamaearth, and more came together at the virtual event to share their thoughts on market dynamics, ecosystem partnerships, products and innovations, and trends that will fuel the next phase of growth of the country’s direct-to-consumer (D2C) ecosystem.
The day kickstarted with a panel discussion where Aman Gupta, Co-founder and CMO, boAt Lifestyle, Ananth Narayanan, and Vineeta Singh spoke about the importance of building a customer-brand relationship to ensure success.
In fact, an hour-long session on investing in sustainability and the essentials of building a sustainable D2C business with an all-women panel, featuring Sahar Mansoor, Founder and CEO, Bare Necessities; Pallavi Utagi, Founder and CEO, Superbottoms; Shauravi Malik, Co-founder, Slurrp Farm; Aishvarya Murali, Founder, The Unbottle Company, and Gita Ramanan, Co-founder and CEO, Design Cafe, was the highlight of the opening day.
With more than 40 speakers talking about the factors essential for the growth of a country's D2C landscape further, the summit collected quite a few insights for the ecosystem players to build upon. Read more.
You can watch videos from all the sessions from Day 1 of Brands of New India Mega Summit here.
The Interview
As businesses power their next phase of growth and business continuity, YourStory has partnered with HSBC to feature entrepreneurs and industry stalwarts who will share groundbreaking lessons and valuable insights from their experience.
In the inaugural episode, industry leaders from the automotive industry map out future trends in the electric vehicle (EV) industry and share how the banking community can make finance more accessible for EVs.
Editor’s Pick: Indian startups and the stock market
When private companies go public, it shouldn’t be the usual substance over the form concept — which insists on firms disclosing the realities of the business over merely complying with the rules, said Promeet Ghosh, Managing Director, India, Temasek Holdings Advisors India Pvt. Ltd.
At a recent virtual seminar, titled "The Startup Boardroom: Building for the Future" organised by Institutional Investor Advisory Services’s (IiAS), Promeet added that public markets are looking at both what are you doing and how are you doing. Read more.
Startup Spotlight
Helping FMCG brands increase rural footprint
Entrepreneur Sanjay Kaul was happy with his work at Impact Communication, a marketing and advertising company he had founded in 1999. However, a fated request from a client led him into the last-mile channel enhancement (LMCE) space.
This request translated into LMCE B2B aggregator startup Xpand, which connects retailers, franchises, and companies on a single platform to solve their last-mile challenges in rural India. Read more.
News & Updates
- Food delivery unicorn Zomato has agreed to acquire minority stakes in two companies — adtech firm Adonmo and business-to-business (B2B) software platform UrbanPiper. It also announced setting up a Non-Banking Finance Company (NBFC) as its subsidiary.
- Ola announced the expansion plans of its quick commerce service — Ola Dash — to open 500 dark stores spread across 20 cities in the next six months, making it the largest dark store network in India.
- Carl Pei-founded London-based consumer tech company Nothing on Friday said it appointed Adam Bates as its Design Director. In this new role, Adam will focus on launching Nothing’s first design hub in London.
- Google and Bharti Airtel announced that they will partner on a long-term, multi-year agreement to accelerate the growth of India’s digital ecosystem. As part of this partnership, Google intends to invest up to $1 billion, as part of its Google for India Digitization Fund.
- Meta (formerly known as Facebook), under its #SheMeansBusiness programme, has partnered with FICCI’s ‘Empowering the Greater 50%’ to enable and support five lakh women-led small businesses (SMBs) across India.
Before you go, stay inspired with…
“I think the next phase of D2C growth will come from going beyond Tier III into ‘Bharat’ and getting them to adopt D2C as a mode to transact.”
— Varun Alagh, Co-founder and CEO, Mamaearth
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Edited by Kanishk Singh