CONNECT WITH US
Tech

Tech

Celebrities don't sell, the product does: Ananth Narayanan on what makes a D2C brand last

YourStory - Demo logo

Published on

Add as a preferred source on Google
Celebrities don't sell, the product does: Ananth Narayanan on what makes a D2C brand last

The froth has gone out of D2C, and brands that want to last will have to earn it slowly. That was the message from Ananth Narayanan, Founder and CEO of BRND.ME, at the 17th edition of YourStory's TechSparks.

In a fireside chat with Shradha Sharma, Founder and CEO of YourStory and The Bharat Project, Narayanan said the shift towards profitable businesses began two to three years ago. "Without product-market fit, just scaling, which a lot of D2C brands used to do, I don't think is valued anymore," he said. "You need real cash flows, you need real product love, which is very hard."

There is no shortcut, he added, "I don't think there is a get-rich-quick on brand building." In his experience a brand takes seven to 15 years to earn real loyalty and cohorts that last five or ten years. Patient capital is becoming easier to find, he said, through FMCG majors such as Unilever and P&G buying D2C brands, and through a coming wave of IPOs. Founders can help themselves by being frugal. "Most of the large FMCG businesses never took any money. Is it possible for D2C to do the same? I think the answer is yes. It's hard. It's very unsexy."

Narayanan believes India's next big brands will be built for overseas shoppers. The old barriers of consumer understanding and distribution are easing, he said, with Amazon Global Selling for reach and AI agents trained on Reddit threads and Amazon reviews to stand in for foreign consumers.


Source link
Related Topics:Tech

Disclaimer

We strive to uphold the highest ethical standards in all of our reporting and coverage. We TheMorningPulse.fyi want to be transparent with our readers about any potential conflicts of interest that may arise in our work. It's possible that some of the investors we feature may have connections to other businesses, including competitors or companies we write about. However, we want to assure our readers that this will not have any impact on the integrity or impartiality of our reporting. We are committed to delivering accurate, unbiased news and information to our audience, and we will continue to uphold our ethics and principles in all of our work. Thank you for your trust and support.