Coffee & Vodka🍹

All things noteworthy in the D2C space

Hey👋

Welcome to GlobalBees D2C Pulse!  The year 2020 was seminal for online first D2C brands. India is now home to 1000+ D2C Brands and this market is poised to cross $100 bn by 2025! The D2C ecosystem has rapidly evolved in the past 12 months.

With new events unfolding in this space every day, be it funding, acquisitions, partnerships, new start-ups or enablers, we have created a one-stop resource for all things noteworthy.

D2C Pulse is a weekly newsletter that provides curated news and content on D2C ecosystem in India.

Let’s get started with the coffee, the vodka will follow…

What’s in the news?

🤑 Blue Tokai is brewing hot with money

Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters just got a booster with an INR 17 Cr Pre-series B funding led by Anicut Angel Fund. The D2C coffee brand started out with selling its coffee online and through B2B partnerships. It now provides complete coffee experiences through owned cafes running across Tier 1 cities.

In contrast to the mass-segment coffee makers Nestlé and Tata, Blue Tokai offers specialty-grade Indian coffee sourced from premium coffee estates of India. No wonder Mordor intelligence reports that Indian coffee market that is set to touch USD 2.03 Bn by 2025, is going to be dominated by new age challenger players like Blue Tokai, SLAY Coffee, Rage and Sleepy Owl. Blue Tokai plans to use the funding to scale its ready-to-brew and ready-to-drink SKUs, international expansion and farm interventions to further improve its coffee’s quality.

💪 BlissClub’s heath is in good shape

Indian activewear market is expected to grow at INR 9 Lac Cr by 2024 and Elevation Capital has got its skin in the game by investing USD 2.25 mn in BlissClub. BlissClub was launched last year by national-level Frisbee player Minu Margeret, focusing on crafting comfortable activewear for Indian women. With its skin friendly CloudSoft fabric and tailor-made sizing for Indian women, BlissClub's is featuring on many shopping carts!

BlissClub has a mission to create a community of women who want to take care of their health; it has already built a strong community of over 15,000 women on social media platforms. It is focusing on Community, Content, and Commerce - the essence of D2C business strategy.

👏Trell gets a pat on the back

Social commerce i.e. displaying products and facilitating buying through social media platforms (Instagram shop, Facebook shop, Whatsapp etc.), is the next frontier in e-commerce. Social commerce, is a USD 2 bn market today. If you recall, Meesho - India’s latest unicorn, is also a social commerce platform based on Whatsapp.

Another such platform called Trell has recently raised USD 45 mn, in a series of funding led by financial group Mirae Asset and fashion brand H&M Group. On Trell, customers purchase products based on video content generated by creators; imagine the telemarketing ads we watched as kids on TV, but this time on the internet and probably by an influencer we trust. 

Trell is helping many brands expand reach of their lifestyle products especially in Tier 2 and 3 cities, thanks to the Jio boom. Trell plans to use the fresh infusion to strengthen its tech in regional languages, supply chain and influencer training. D2C brands, get ready to leverage the power of video marketing with Trell!

We do have a bummer to report post this funding frenzy🙈

👋 Adios Cloudtail

Cloudtail, the behemoth of Amazon third party sellers was founded in 2014 as a joint venture between Amazon and the N.R. Narayana Murthy-owned Catamaran Ventures. It has since enabled more than 300,000 entrepreneurs to sell their products online. It closed FY 2020 with a topline of whopping INR 11,413 crores, and a profit of Rs INR 68 crores. However, in the backdrop of Foreign Investment Rules, Competition Commission probe and new draft e-commerce consumer protection rules, that categorically disallow parties linked to e-commerce companies from being listed as sellers, Cloudtail (being a related party to Amazon) plans to cease operations from May 2022.

Being the top Amazon seller in India, this development will significantly impact sales of many brands national and international, that are selling in India through Cloudtail.

Brands that caught our eye!

🥄Taste the spoon for a change

You read it right, we just asked you to taste the spoon and not the dish. India is witnessing many start-ups built around sustainability – one concept that’s being explored is edible cutlery.

• The Bengaluru-based startup Gajamukha Foods has around 35 flavoured cutlery items ranging from biryani, sambhar and chocolate to peanut.

• Next we have Trishula, a company started in Gujarat, that turns beetroot, spinach, chocolate, masala, black pepper, mint, and ajwain to spoons for adding flavour to your food.

🌷Menstruation is natural

Promoting green menstruation, Anju Arora and Chirantana Kar founded ‘The Period Hub’ in 2019, offering a range of eco-friendly and chemical-free products for women on their period including massage oils, heating pads, roll-ons, creams, reusable pads, and menstrual cups. Scaling up with time, the company now ships products countrywide.

With people moving towards sustainability, these brands are right on track with their green approach.

🧐 Uncover the Rahasya of Vodka

Finally, the vodka! With homegrown craft gin and beer taking over the country, we are pleasantly surprised to see a new homegrown vodka brand from Goa, called ‘Rahasya’, founded in 2020 by a third time entrepreneur Varna Bhat. Bhat noticed that Vodka despite being the second-most consumed spirit in the country after whisky, hardly has any local innovation. So, with the spirit of celebrating India's eccentricity, using its grains and botanicals, Bhat created Blisswater Industries’ Rahasya Vodka. Blisswater Industries recently also raised a fund of USD 335,000 to expand the company’s geographic footprint and broadening its product offering.

Trend of the week:

💄 Indian Beauty and skincare market

Indian Skincare market is currently valued at INR 120.76 bn and is poised to reach almost INR190 bn in next few years. Skincare brands have taken India by a storm not just because of their products, but also thanks to the stories and values they have embedded within their brand. Let’s take a look at the challenger brands in this space👇

Reads & Recommendations

Want to take a break and get your eyes off your screen? Maybe a podcast? If yes, then tune into The Indian Dream Podcast run by the duo Sahil & Siddharth. This show is about the heart of entrepreneurship – SMEs and founders who have been building profitable businesses. We highly recommend listening to their episode about Naturals Ice Cream and Tally Solutions.

In addition to talking to SME founders, they do deep dives into latest business trends (e.g. high tech farming, IoT, D2C) along with long form articles. Here’s The Indian Dream trends article on D2C trends in India.

That’s all for this week!

Stay tuned for more insights about the D2C start-ups in India. This is our first try, do share your feedback. Subscribe to our newsletter and share it with your friends!