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October 24, 2025
Entrepreneur India
Oct 23, 2025
Indian consumers are increasingly opting for private labels and in-house brands over established ones, and retailers are taking note. According to EY’s ‘Future Consumer Index 2025’, more than half of India’s consumers are now choosing in-house brands over legacy labels.
The report highlights that 52 per cent of Indian consumers have switched to private labels for better value, while 70 per cent believe these in-house brands offer comparable or superior quality. Backed by this shift, retailers from BigBasket to DMart, and quick-commerce players like Zepto and Blinkit, are doubling down on their private label strategies, viewing them as a path to higher margins, stronger brand loyalty, and greater pricing control.
“Indian consumers’ growing preference for private labels reflects both short-term price pressures and a longer-term structural evolution in retail,” said Devangshu Dutta, CEO of Third Eyesight, speaking to Entrepreneur India.
Trending globally
The surge isn’t unique to India. A recent report by the Institute of Grocery Distribution (IGD) notes that globally, private labels now account for over 45 per cent of grocery volume and are expanding faster than legacy brands.
In India, this shift is becoming increasingly visible in-store. The EY report found that 74 per cent of consumers have noticed more private label options where they shop, and 70 per cent say these products are now displayed more prominently, often placed at eye level, signalling a strategic retail push.
Commenting on this trend, Angshuman Bhattacharya, Partner and National Leader, Consumer Products and Retail Sector, EY-Parthenon, said, “Consumer behaviour has traditionally evolved in response to changing economic situations, but the current shifts appear to be more permanent. Retailers are confidently launching private labels and allocating prime shelf space to them, while technology is enhancing the shopping experience by providing consumers with limitless options and the ability to compare products.”
From price-fighters to power brands
According to Dutta, private labels are no longer just “copycat” alternatives meant to undercut national brands.
“For retailers, not just in India but globally, lookalike private labels used to be tools at the opening price point to hook the customer, who saw them as credible, affordable alternatives to national brands,” he explained, adding, “However, as retailers have grown, they have gained both scale and expertise to widen and deepen their supply chains.”
Over time, he said, investments in formulation, packaging, and quality consistency have increased consumer trust.
“Private labels now compete on functional benefits rather than only on price, particularly in food staples and apparel, but also in brown goods and white goods, and increasingly in personal care and other FMCG categories,” he added. [Must read: “Private Label Maturity Model”]
Retailers scale up private labels
As demand for in-house brands grows, retailers are scaling up their strategies across sectors.
BigBasket, one of India’s largest online grocery platforms, reported that 35–40 per cent of its FY24 sales came from private labels like Fresho, BB Royal, and Tasties. The company aims to push this share closer to 45 per cent through expansion in frozen foods and ready-to-eat categories.
DMart’s private label arm, Align Retail, has reportedly more than doubled its sales in two years, touching INR 3,322 crore in FY25. The retailer’s in-house brands in staples, apparel, and home essentials have helped boost margins in a highly competitive retail landscape.
Zepto, the quick-commerce player, is taking private labels into the 10-minute delivery domain. Its brand Relish, focused on meats and eggs, has achieved INR 40 crore in monthly sales.
Meanwhile, Reliance Retail has also expanded its portfolio of private labels, including Good Life, Enzo, and Puric, across groceries, personal care, and household products, strengthening its broader FMCG play. In 2024, Reliance Retail’s Tira Beauty also announced the launch of its latest private label brand, Nails Our Way, signifying a major expansion in its beauty offerings.
Capturing a lion’s share in retail
Dutta noted that in India, private labels will remain a core pillar of modern retail strategy rather than a cyclical response to cost pressures.
“Consumers increasingly view retailers as brand owners rather than intermediaries. As private labels mature in branding and innovation, their growth aligns more and more with brand equity development rather than just opportunistic cost-saving,” he said.
From a retailer’s perspective, private labels deliver higher gross margins and greater strategic control, Dutta said. [Must read: “Private Label Maturity Model”]
Another report by the Private Label Manufacturers Association (PLMA), using Circana data, found that in 2024, private-label sales in food and non-edible categories grew faster than bigger brands globally. While figures vary by region and quarter, the pattern remains consistent: private labels are outpacing traditional FMCG growth.
Collectively, these shifts show that private labels are becoming a major revenue driver for retailers in India, and are fast evolving from value alternatives into brands with genuine consumer pull.
(Published in Entrepreneur India)
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September 24, 2025
Shabori Das & Sagar Malviya, Economic Times
Bengaluru/Mumbai, 24 September 2025
Chinese fast-fashion platform Shein plans to triple the number of launches in India and shrink its design-to-launch timeline by a third to deepen its push into an increasingly competitive market, a top official said.
The company, which re-entered India through a partnership with Reliance Retail in February this year, said it is overhauling its supply chain to enable faster turnaround times. To achieve this, it has moved away from large-scale manufacturing hubs to smaller production lines with each line focused on creating a single new design daily.
“Our current timelines, measured from ‘thought to site’, stand at 46 days. We are targeting 30 days,” said Vineeth Nair, chief executive of Reliance’s fashion platform Ajio that steers Shein in India. “We currently deliver 320 styles a day – about 10,000 a month – and plan to scale that to over 30,000 styles monthly in the coming months,” he told ET.
Speaking about the speed of manufacturing, Nair said, “We quantify our options in terms of production lines, with each line optimised to deliver one design option per day, rather than factories. Some of our large production units have been repurposed into multiple lines.”
Shein first launched in India in 2018 with its own online shop. However, the app was banned by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) along with TikTok, WeChat and over 55 other Chinese apps.
One of the primary issues and controversies surrounding Shein’s India operations was the use of the consumer data by the Chinese apparel retailer.
Under the current partnership model, Reliance Retail is operating Shein under licensing agreement and ensures complete customer data ownership as per the company.
Unlike international markets, Shein India products are made in India.
“It’s still early days – just about three months since we introduced Shein to the India Gen Z,” Nair said. “And we are still in the process of adding multiple products, which we intend to do in the next few months.”
He said the brand is witnessing two million daily average users, dominated by 21-year-old women who account for 62% of the traffic.
Shein, the world’s biggest ecommerce-centred fashion retailer, however, may find it hard to replicate its global success in India, according to Devangshu Dutta, founder of retail consulting firm Third Eyesight.
“Shein’s edge internationally has been its speed of dropping its products, and the width of its product category. The India model is not the same. The India model of fashion is slower, and the product category width is not as large,” he noted. “Hence, the brand will in all probability end up competing with the already established market like Myntra, Zudio and the likes.”
(Published in Economic Times)
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September 17, 2025
Sowmya Ramasubramanian, Mint
17 September 2025
Snapdeal, run by AceVector, is relying on strong growth in fashion and apparel to strengthen its position in the competitive e-commerce space, especially during the high-stakes festive season when customer loyalty is low. According to CEO Achint Setia, the company has seen its fashion and lifestyle categories triple in growth this year, though exact figures remain undisclosed.
“Fashion has been a standout category this year and, in fact, has been possibly the fastest-growing one so far. Overall, lifestyle [including fashion, home decor, and kitchen] already accounts for 90% of our business today, and fashion is a major driving force,” Setia told Mint in an interview.
Setia was appointed to the role in January, replacing Himanshu Chakrawarti, who led Snapdeal and its subsidiary Stellaro Brands for three years. Setia has over two decades of experience across marketing and strategy roles in firms like Myntra, Viacom18 Media, and Zalora Group.
While the festival season is a key period for all consumer-facing brands and platforms, this year is important for Snapdeal as it is currently waiting for the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) clearance to list in the public markets.
“Approval from Sebi before the end of the financial year is crucial for Snapdeal. If they don’t get it, or if they have to refile, they’ll need to update their IPO documents with a full year of financial data. This means the festive season performance will be key in shaping investor sentiment, especially in a volatile market,” said a senior e-commerce executive, asking not to be named.
The firm filed its draft papers for an IPO reportedly to raise ₹500 crore through the confidential route in July, which allows it to withhold public disclosure of IPO details until later stages. Setia declined to comment on the progress of the filing.
Despite its early entry, Snapdeal is yet to make a mark among the top e-commerce players in the country by both market share and volume of transactions. For context, industry estimates show Flipkart as the market leader with 48% share, followed by Meesho and Amazon. The Indian e-commerce market is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21% and reach $325 billion dollars in 2030 as per an October 2024 report by Deloitte.
Founded in 2010 by Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, Snapdeal was initially launched as a daily deals platform and later pivoted to a full-fledged marketplace in 2011. Over the years it raised more than $1.8 billion in funding from Softbank, Alibaba group, Foxconn and Blackrock among others. However, intense competition and the absence of a distinct growth strategy have gradually eroded Snapdeal’s momentum in the e-commerce space.
Snapdeal largely caters to cities outside metropolitan areas where value retail has picked up in recent years. Within this, fashion remains the top growth driver-with more than 80% of orders placed priced below 1599 and 80% of them com-ing from small town India, accord-ing to CEO Setia. “For us, it’s about the value-conscious mindset that could be sitting out of anywhere,” he noted.
Over the last few months, Snapdeal has invested substantially in in-house festive campaigns, as well as technology and tools for returns forecasting and logistics. According to Setia, it has also expanded its seller portfolio, adding more from key clusters like Tirupur, Surat, Ludhiana, and Agra.
According to a September 2024 report by market research firm Centrum, the mass-market fashion segment accounts for 56% of India’s total apparel market.
However, offline continues to account for more than half the sales, with Tata’s Trent, D-Mart, and Vishal Mega Mart offering a sufficient selection of price-conscious consumers in smaller towns.
While small-town India offers a wide online shopping-savvy market waiting to be captured, Meesho has raced past Snapdeal in those geographies, especially in value commerce.
“For a very long time, Snapdeal has been positioned as an e-commerce platform for Bharat, but it doesn’t necessarily hold a strong position. Meesho, Flipkart and Amazon have expanded their presence in these markets over the years, which means competition is so much more now,” said Devangshu Dutta, founder and chief executive officer at consulting firm Third Eyesight.
(Published in Mint)
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September 5, 2025
Shalinee Mishra, Exchange4Media
5 September 2025
Retailers in India are waking up to a hard truth: customer acquisition can no longer ride on advertising alone. Digital ad spends grew by 14-17% in 2024, touching nearly ₹50,000 crore (as per Pitch Madison report) and accounting for 46% of India’s total ad market. But with customer acquisition costs (CAC) rising 30-35% year-on-year and consumer attention fragmented across platforms, the ad-first growth engine is showing strain. What is emerging instead is an ecosystem where content in the form of video, celebrity-led storytelling, or creator-driven engagement is becoming the direct funnel to commerce.
Flipkart for instance is building influencer production hubs and embedding shoppable videos, Myntra has rolled out its video-first Glamstream, and Amazon has long blurred the line between streaming and shopping through Prime Video and Fire TV. From short videos to celebrity gossip, from beauty blogs to shoppable livestreams, e-commerce giants are no longer just marketplaces; they are evolving into media houses and the trend is only growing.
According to Mindshare’s latest Content Trend Report, India’s branded content marketing industry is now worth ₹10,000 crore, growing at nearly 20% annually, with video formats making up almost half of all spends.
India already has over 270 million online shoppers, a number that Bain projects will rise to 350 million by 2027, making it the world’s second largest e-retail user base. That scale is creating fertile ground for shoppable video and live commerce to take off.
Globally, branded content spend is projected to cross $500 bn by 2027. As per PwC estimates, India’s share is still <2% but among the fastest growing.
Video commerce today largely follows two prominent models. The first is driven by social platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook, where shoppable posts allow users to move directly from content to purchase. The second is led by e-commerce platforms like Amazon, Myntra, Nykaa, and Flipkart and others which have added video sections to create immersive shopping experiences within their apps.
Within this, live commerce has emerged as a high-potential format. Meesho and Flipkart, for example, are leading the charge with 2-3% conversion rates, generating an estimated $150-200 million in GMV during festive 2024. Events like Flipkart’s Big Billion Days show how timed livestreams can capture active, purchase-ready audiences.
Meanwhile, influencer-led short videos are driving conversion rates as high as 63%, with beauty and personal care (BPC) and food & beverages (F&B) among the top categories benefiting from this shift. Redseer projects India’s live commerce market could touch $4-5 bn GMV by 2027, up from less than $300 mn today. This surge in shoppable video and live commerce is only the surface of a deeper structural change, one where content itself is becoming the moat that protects brands from rising ad costs, fragmented attention, and fickle consumer loyalty.
Beyond ads: Why content has become retail’s strongest defence
Chirag Taneja, co-founder of e-commerce enablement company GoKwik, framed the trend as a fundamental shift in ownership.
“It’s not just about enhancing top-of-funnel reach, it’s about owning demand, connection, and the touchpoint with end shoppers. For years, brands relied on ads to bring traffic. But acquisition costs have been rising, attention is fragmented, and privacy shifts have made targeting difficult. That’s why content is now the moat. When companies acquire content firms, they’re not just buying eyeballs, they’re securing access to communities that trust and engage with that content.”
According to him, content is collapsing the traditional funnel. “One short video or livestream can take a consumer from awareness to purchase in under a minute. That’s why we see D2C brands treating content as a compounding asset, not just an expense,” he added.
Devangshu Dutta, founder and CEO of management consulting firm Third Eyesight, echoed the sentiment.
“Large companies are buying or partnering with content-driven platforms to capture attention beyond transactional touch points. Short video, regional language content, and influencer-driven discovery are embedding commerce within entertainment. If you want to sell more than a commodity, storytelling is critical. Content builds credibility, differentiation, and trust in a cluttered and price-sensitive market.”
Flipkart bets big on media and creators
The shift is already reshaping strategy at India’s biggest retailers, and Flipkart has moved fastest. Its move to acquire a majority stake in Pinkvilla, a platform built on entertainment and celebrity news signals a clear push to deepen ties with Gen Z and millennials, a cohort that consumes content first and shops later.
“Our acquisition of a majority stake in Pinkvilla is a critical step in our mission to deepen our engagement with Gen Z. Pinkvilla’s robust content IPs and strong connection with its loyal audience base are assets that will accelerate our efforts to leverage content as a key driver of growth,” said Ravi Iyer, Senior Vice President, Corporate at Flipkart.
Flipkart in the last year has exited investments in companies like Aditya Birla Fashion & Retail, where it sold its 7.5% stake in the owner of Pantaloons, Van Heusen, Louis Philippe and Forever 21, as well as BlackBuck, the trucking marketplace that powers India’s mid-mile logistics.
At the same time, the company has doubled down on content and creators. Its Pinkvilla acquisition gives it access to a platform reaching over 60 million monthly users, while in-house features like Flipkart Feed already clock 5–6 million daily video views, highlighting how commerce and content are converging at scale.
Alongside this, Flipkart has launched Creator Cities in Mumbai, Bengaluru and Gurgaon, production hubs designed for influencers to shoot and scale shoppable content.
It has also introduced Flipkart Feed, a TikTok-style vertical video feature embedded in its app, offering bite-sized, influencer-led, fully shoppable videos. Myntra, its fashion arm, has developed Glamstream, with more than 500 hours of video-first shopping content across music, beauty, travel and weddings, featuring stars like Badshah, Tabu, Zeenat Aman and Vijay Deverakonda.
Flipkart has also partnered with YouTube Shopping, allowing creators with over 10,000 subscribers to tag Flipkart products in videos, Shorts and livestreams, enabling viewers to buy directly while creators earn commissions.
Amazon’s head start in content-commerce convergence Flipkart is not alone. Its biggest rival Amazon has long understood this convergence. Through Prime Video and its original programming slate, Amazon has built an entertainment ecosystem that doubles as a commerce funnel. The shows and films on Prime do not merely entertain; they drive shopping behaviour, influence trends, and lock audiences into Amazon’s larger universe of services. With Fire TV and Alexa integrations, the company has blurred the line between watching and buying, a model others are now racing to replicate.
D2C brands treat content as growth engine
Closer home, the Good Glamm Group, now closed, had pioneered a content-led commerce ecosystem in beauty and personal care. Through acquisitions like ScoopWhoop and MissMalini Entertainment, the group stitched together a portfolio where content platforms brought in audiences, who were then nudged towards its direct-to-consumer brands.
This “editorial-to-checkout” model demonstrated how cultural capital could be translated into purchase pathways. Alibaba has taken the strategy global. With stakes in Youku, a leading video-streaming platform, and Alibaba Pictures, the e-commerce titan integrates entertainment with retail operations. Taobao Live has shown how livestream shopping can dominate consumer behavior, particularly inAsia, creating billion-dollar shopping events entirely dependent on
entertainment-driven discovery.
Shopify, meanwhile, has invested in tools that empower merchants to become content creators themselves. Its partnerships with agencies like Sanity and investments in platforms such as Billo reflect a clear intent to enable retailers to embed storytelling, gamification, and user-generated content into their selling journey. Unlike large marketplaces, Shopify’s vision is not to own the content but to democratize access to it for small and mid-sized businesses.
From content to commerce
This content includes newsletters, creator partnerships, branded podcasts, and niche communities on social media. The idea, as industry experts note, is to treat content as an asset that compounds, not just as a cost.
Unlike ads, content continues to generate discovery and engagement long after it’s published. That’s why more D2C brands are making content central to their growth strategies.
Several big names are experimenting in this space. Durex, Plum, Mother Dairy, and HDFC Bank have launched their own podcasts where celebrities share stories along their brand journey. Founder-led podcasts too are on the rise on YouTube, with voices like Nitin Kamath and Deepinder Goyal drawing large audiences in India.
The big question, however, is whether content consumption can effectively be converted into product discovery and purchase pathways. “It’s already happening at scale,” said Taneja. “Content is redefining every aspect of the traditional funnel. In the past, you had awareness at the top, intent in the middle, and purchase at the bottom. Today, one short video or live stream can take a consumer through that entire journey in under a minute.
“From a D2C lens, this convergence is even more critical. D2C brands thrive on agility, the ability to turn trends, storytelling, and community engagement directly into sales. Platforms like Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and even WhatsApp have embedded shoppable features, which means the content is no longer just ‘top-of-funnel.’ It’s the storefront. But the magic lies in authenticity and design. Consumers don’t want to feel ‘sold to’, they want to feel entertained, inspired, or educated. If the content does that well, conversion becomes a natural byproduct. For example, an athleisure brand showing a workout routine isn’t just demonstrating leggings, it’s giving value. The leggings purchase becomes an easy next step, not a forced pitch.”
The big question: Will content sustain sales at scale?
Taneja further reveals how content is driving sales and long-term growth. “The smartest brands, especially in D2C, have realized that high-quality
content is their most defensible growth engine. Performance marketing will continue to play a role, but the real long-term moat is the kind of content that builds relationships, trust, and recall. Consumers today are spoiled for choice. They don’t buy just products, they buy stories, values, and communities.
“High-quality content allows a brand to consistently show up in ways that feel relevant and credible. And from a business lens, it directly impacts unit economics: it reduces CAC because organic discovery compounds over time, improves LTV because content nurtures loyalty and repeat purchases, and builds resilience because brands with strong content ecosystems are less dependent on fluctuating ad platforms.”
The D2C ecosystem in India is already proving this point. Beauty and personal care brands now run editorial-led platforms alongside commerce, while fashion labels thrive on creator collaborations and storytelling-driven product drops. Their growth is not accidental but built on content strategies that treat every piece not just as a post, but as a business driver.
As an enabler, Taneja adds, the results are visible across platforms. “Brands that invest in content see better conversions on our checkout stack, lower cart drops, and stronger repeat cohorts. Content doesn’t just spark sales it sustains them.”
For all the optimism, the test for content-driven commerce will lie in scale and sustainability. Rising conversions in beauty, fashion, and food show the model works, but questions remain on whether every category can replicate that success, or whether consumers will tire of content-heavy shopping pitches.
(Published in Exchange4Media)
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August 6, 2025
Naini Thaker, Forbes India
Aug 06, 2025
It’s a known fact that of the thousands of startups founded each year, only a small fraction survive—and even fewer scale to become unicorns. Rarer still are those unicorns which, after reaching dizzying heights, come crashing down. The Good Glamm Group is one such cautionary tale.
Once celebrated as a unicorn that cracked the code on content-to-commerce, the company’s meteoric rise was matched only by the speed of its unravelling. At the heart of its downfall lies a critical misstep: The relentless pursuit of growth through acquisitions and brand launches, even as cracks in its house-of-brands model began to show. Instead of pausing to consolidate and build sustainably, Good Glamm doubled down—prioritising valuation over viability.
That strategy came to a head on July 23 when founder and CEO Darpan Sanghvi announced the dissolution of the group’s house-of-brands structure. In a LinkedIn post, Sanghvi confirmed that lenders would now oversee the sale of individual brands, effectively ending the company’s vision of building a digital-first FMCG conglomerate.
Despite raising $30 million in 2024 and undergoing multiple rounds of restructuring, the group failed to integrate its acquisitions or generate sustainable profitability. With key investors such as Accel and Bessemer Venture Partners exiting the board and leadership turnover accelerating, the company’s ambitious empire—built on rapid expansion and aggressive brand aggregation—has now been reduced to a lender-led breakup.
In the aftermath of the announcement, Sanghvi offered a candid reflection on what went wrong. “In hindsight, it wasn’t one decision, one market force, or one acquisition. It was three levers we pulled, which together, turned Momentum into a Trap,” he wrote in a LinkedIn post. According to Sanghvi, the group’s downfall stemmed from doing “too much, too fast and too big”.
He elaborated: “At first, Momentum feels like your greatest ally. Every headline, every funding round, every big launch is a shot of adrenaline. And you start believing you can do more and more and more. But momentum has a dark side. If you stop steering and go in a hundred different directions, it doesn’t just carry you forward, it drags you faster and faster until you can’t breathe.”
Where The Model Broke?
In October 2017, Sanghvi launched direct-to-consumer (DTC) beauty brand MyGlamm. Most brands at the time were big on selling on marketplaces such as Amazon or Nykaa. However, Sanghvi believed, “We wanted to be truly DTC and not just digitally enabled. We believed that to own the customer, the transaction needs to happen on our own platform.”
But the biggest challenge with being a DTC brand is its customer acquisition cost (CAC). Towards the end of 2019, the company was spending about $15 (over ₹1,000) to acquire a customer to transact on their website. “Around the same time, our revenue run rate was ₹100 crore. We were spending about $0.5 million to acquire 30,000 customers a month. That’s when we realised it was time to solve the CAC problem,” Sanghvi told Forbes India in 2022. In an attempt to find a solution, Sanghvi turned to the content-to-commerce model.
And then, started the acquisition spree. According to Sanghvi, with a single brand in a single category one can’t build scale. He told Forbes India, “The most you can scale it is ₹1,000 crore, if you want a company that’s doing ₹8,000 or ₹10,000 crore in revenue, it has to be multiple brands across multiple categories.” In hindsight, this perspective might be debatable.
As Devangshu Dutta, founder of consultancy Third Eyesight, points out, the “house of brands” model is essentially a modern-day consumer-facing business conglomerate—and its success hinges on multiple factors working in harmony. While there are examples globally and in India of such models thriving, both privately and publicly, the reality is far more nuanced. “Brands take time to grow, and organisations take time to mature,” Dutta notes, emphasising that rapid aggregation of founder-led businesses under a single ownership umbrella is no guarantee of success.
In recent years, Dutta feels the influx of capital into early-stage startups and copycat models—often seen as lower risk due to their success in other geographies—has shortened business lifecycles and inflated expectations. The hope is that synergies across the portfolio will unlock outsized value, but that rarely plays out as planned. “It is well-documented that more than 70 percent of mergers and acquisitions fail,” he adds, citing reasons such as weak brand fundamentals, lack of synergy, inadequate capital, limited management bandwidth, and internal misalignment.
In the case of Good Glamm, these fault lines became increasingly visible as the group expanded faster than it could integrate or stabilise.
Scaling Without Steering
In FY21, the company had losses of ₹43.63 crore, which rose to ₹362.5 crore in FY22 and went up to ₹917 crore in FY23. Despite the mounting losses, Good Glamm marked its entry into the US market, in a joint venture with tennis player Serena Williams to launch a new brand—Wyn Beauty by Serena Williams. The launch was in partnership with US-based beauty retailer Ulta Beauty.
For its international expansion, it invested close to ₹250 crore over three years. “We anticipate that the international business will account for 25 to 35 percent of our total group revenues by the end of next year. This strategic focus on international expansion is pivotal as we prepare for our IPO in October 2025,” he told Forbes India in April 2024.
Clearly, things didn’t pan out as expected. As Sanghvi rightly points out, it was indeed a momentum trap. “You tell yourself you’ll fix the leaks after the next milestone. But the milestones keep coming, and so do the leaks. Soon, you’re running from fire to fire, never realising that the whole building is getting hotter. And somewhere along the way, you lose the stillness to think,” he writes on his LinkedIn post.
Dutta feels that a strong balance sheet is the most fundamental requirement, “to provide growth-funding for the acquisitions or for allowing the time needed for the acquisitions to mature into self-sustaining businesses over years. In the case of VC-funded businesses, the pressure to scale in a short time can go against what may be best for the business or for its individual brands”.
The Good Glamm Group’s fall is a reminder that scale alone doesn’t build resilience. Its story reflects the risks of expanding faster than a business can integrate, and of prioritising valuation over value. The house-of-brands model can work—but only when backed by strategic clarity, operational discipline, and patience. This is less a warning and more a reminder for founders: Scale is not success, and speed is not strategy.
(Published in Forbes India)
