admin
March 24, 2022
Written By Christina Moniz
D2C brands take the offline route to widen reach
Direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands are fluffing up the Indian mattress category with promises of lower prices, mattress-in-a-box convenience, 10-year warranty and 100-day trials. In a market that is predominantly unorganised, startups such as Wakefit, The Sleep Company, SleepyCat and Flo are aspiring to establish themselves as better alternatives to legacy brands such as Kurlon and Sleepwell, with most of them looking at the offline retail route too, to boost sales.
According to a Research and Markets report, while India’s overall mattress market has grown at a CAGR of over 11% in the last five years, the organised industry has grown at 17%. The mattress category in India is worth `12,000-13,000 crore; of this the organised segment commands 40% share.
New-age mattress brands are able to deliver products at lower price points by taking control of the entire consumer journey – from product discovery to post-sales support. Therefore, these D2C brands save big on distributor and retail margins, says Devangshu Dutta, CEO, Third Eyesight. These savings go towards compensating for higher customer acquisition costs and logistics, he observes. The elimination of the middlemen means that customers get their products at 30-35% less than what traditional players offer.
However, these digital-native companies are aware that they operate in a touch-and-feel category, which is why many offer a 100-day trial period. Priyanka Salot, co-founder, The Sleep Company, says that the product return rate is only 2-3%, and the returned mattresses are donated to charities but never resold. The Sleep Company, which entered the market a little over two years ago, is eyeing a turnover of `1,000 crore in the next five years, and has plans to launch its first offline store in a few months.
Online players also save on logistics, says Chaitanya Ramalingegowda, co-founder and director at Wakefit. “We implemented the roll-pack technology that allows the mattress to fit into a compact box. This lets us ship more products at a time,” he says. Wakefit has only two factories—one in north India and the other in south India—as opposed to older players with 10-12 factories across the country, he points out. The company hopes to close FY22 with a turnover of 630 crore, up from197 crore in FY20. It has one offline experience centre in Bengaluru, with plans to launch 10 more across five cities soon; these centres will not only be experiential, but also double up as booking/ retail sales outlets.
Offline boost
Rajat Wahi, partner, Deloitte India, points out that these new-age mattress brands must establish deeper offline distribution to expand reach. “After all, more than 90% of retail is offline in India,” he notes.
This is why D2C brands are not only taking the offline route, but also foraying into other segments like furniture and sleepwear. Kabir Siddiq, founder and CEO of SleepyCat, says the brand has plans to launch around four experience centres, and aims to become a one-stop shop for all sleep and comfort solutions, offering comforters, pillows and even bedding for pets.
Is the proliferation of D2C players giving legacy brands sleepless nights? Mohanraj J, CEO, Duroflex, says it has been akin to a “wake-up call”. He says the company has poured in investments into the D2C segment in the past few years, and now even has a completely online brand called Sleepyhead, catering to the millennial consumers. “Until recently, about 10% of our company’s growth was from online sales, but we expect that number to change to 30-35% this year,” he adds.
Despite the influx of new-age players, he maintains that Duroflex has doubled its growth in the past two years, with traditional retail registering 25-30% annual growth.
Source: financialexpress
Devangshu Dutta
September 28, 2017
In recent decades, the dependence on established medical disciplines has begun to be challenged. There is the oft-quoted dictum that healthcare sector tends to illness rather than health. Another saying goes that some of the food you eat keeps you in good health, but most of what you eat keeps your doctor in good health. With a gap emerging between wellness-seekers and the healthcare sector, so-called “alternative” options are stepping in.
Some of these alternatives actually existed as well-structured and well-documented traditional medical practices for thousands of years before the introduction of more recent Western medical disciplines. This includes India’s Siddha system and Ayurved (literally, “science of life”), which certainly don’t deserve being relegated to an “alternative” footnote. Ayurved is also said to have influenced medicine in China over a millennium ago, through the translation of Indian medical texts into Chinese.
Other than these, there are also more recent inventions riding the “wellness” buzzword. These may draw from the traditional systems and texts, or be built upon new pharmaceutical or nutraceutical formulations. Broader wellness regimens – much like Ayurved and Siddha – blend two or more elements from the following basket: food choices and restrictions, minerals, extracts and supplements, physical exercise and perhaps some form of meditative practices. Wellness, thus, is often characterised by a mix-and-match based on individual choices and conveniences, spiked with celebrity influences.
A key premise driving the wellness sector is that modern medicine depends too heavily on attacking specific issues with single chemicals (drugs) or combinations of single chemicals that are either isolated or synthesised in laboratories, and that it ignores the diversity and complexity of factors contributing to health and well-being. The second major premise for many wellness practitioners (though not all!) is that, provided the right conditions, the body can heal itself. For the consumer the reasons for the surge in demand for traditional wellness solutions include escalating costs of conventional health care, the adverse effects of allopathic drugs, and increasing lifestyle disorders.
After food, wellness has turned into possibly one of the largest consumer industries on the planet. Global pharmaceutical sales are estimated at over US$ 1.1 trillion. In contrast, according to the Global Wellness Institute, the wellness market dwarfs this, estimated at US$ 3.7 trillion (2015). This figure includes a vast range of services such as beauty and anti-ageing, nutrition and weight loss, wellness tourism, fitness and mind-body, preventative and personalized medicine, wellness lifestyle real estate, spa industry, thermal/mineral springs, and workplace wellness. Within this, the so-called “Complementary and Alternative Medicine” is estimated to be about US$200 billion.
There are several reasons why “complementary and alternative medicine” sales are not yet larger. Rooted in economically backward countries such as India, these have been seen as outdated, less effective and even unscientific. In India, the home of Siddha and Ayurved, apart from individual practitioners, several companies such as Baidyanath, Dabur, Himalaya and others were active in the market for decades, but were usually seen as stodgy and products of need, and usually limited to people of the older generations and rural populations. In the West they typically attracted a fringe customer base, or were a last resort for patients who did not find a solution for their specific problem in modern allopathy and hospitals.
However, through the 1970s Ayurved gained in prominence in the West, riding on the New Age movement. Gradually, in recent decades proponents turned to modern production techniques, slick packaging and up-to-date marketing, and even local cultivation in the West of medicinal plants taken from India.
As wellness demonstrated an increasingly profitable vector in the West, Indian entrepreneurs, too, have taken note of this opportunity. Perhaps Shahnaz Husain was one of the earliest movers in the beauty segment, followed by Biotique in the early-1990s that developed a brand driven not just by a specific need but by desire and an approach that was distinctly anti-commodity, the characteristics of any successful brand. Others followed, including FMCG companies such as the multinational giant Unilever. The last decade-and-a-half has also brought the phenomenon called Patanjali, a brand that began with Ayurvedic products and grew into an FMCG and packaged food-empire faster than any other brand before! While a few giants have emerged, the market is still evolving, allowing other brands to develop, whether as standalone names or as extensions of spiritual and holistic healing foundations, such as Sri Sri Tattva, Isha Arogya and others.
An absolutely critical driver of this growth in the Indian market now is the generation that has grown up during the last 25-30 years. It is a class that is driven by choice and modern consumerism, but that also wishes to reconnect with its spiritual and cultural roots. This group is aware of global trends but takes pride in home-grown successes. It is comfortable blending global branded sportswear with yoga or using an Indian ayurvedic treatment alongside an international beauty product.
Of course, there is a faddish dimension to the wellness phenomenon, and it is open to exploitation by poor or ineffective products, non-standard and unscientific treatments, entirely outrageous efficacy claims, and price-gouging.
To remain on course and strengthen, the wellness movement will need structured scientific assessment and development at a larger scale, a move that will need both industry and government to work closely together. Traditional texts would need to be recast in modern scientific frameworks, supported by robust testing and validation. Education needs to be strengthened, as does the use of technology.
However the industry and the government move, from the consumer’s point-of-view the juggernaut is now rolling.
(An edited version of this piece was published in Brand Wagon, Financial Express.)
Devangshu Dutta
January 10, 2017
In this piece I’ll just focus on one aspect of technology – artificial intelligence or AI – that is likely to shape many aspects of the retail business and the consumer’s experience over the coming years.
To be able to see the scope of its potential all-pervasive impact we need to go beyond our expectations of humanoid robots. We also need to understand that artificial intelligence works on a cycle of several mutually supportive elements that enable learning and adaptation. The terms “big data” and “analytics” have been bandied about a lot, but have had limited impact so far in the retail business because it usually only touches the first two, at most three, of the necessary elements.
“Big data” models still depend on individuals in the business taking decisions and acting based on what is recommended or suggested by the analytics outputs, and these tend to be weak links which break the learning-adaptation chain. Of course, each of these elements can also have AI built in, for refinement over time.
Certainly retailers with a digital (web or mobile) presence are in a better position to use and benefit from AI, but that is no excuse for others to “roll over and die”. I’ll list just a few aspects of the business already being impacted and others that are likely to be in the future.
On the consumer-side, AI can deliver a far higher degree of personalisation of the experience than has been feasible in the last few decades. While I’ve described different aspects, now see them as layers one built on the other, and imagine the shopping experience you might have as a consumer. If the scenario seems as if it might be from a sci-fi movie, just give it a few years. After all, moving staircases and remote viewing were also fantasy once.
On the business end it potentially offers both flexibility and efficiency, rather than one at the cost of the other. But we’ll have to tackle that area in a separate piece.
(Also published in the Business Standard.)
Devangshu Dutta
January 21, 2016
Aggregator models and hyperlocal delivery, in theory, have some significant advantages over existing business models.
Unlike an inventory-based model, aggregation is asset-light, allowing rapid building of critical mass. A start-up can tap into existing infrastructure, as a bridge between existing retailers and the consumer. By tapping into fleeting consumption opportunities, the aggregator can actually drive new demand to the retailer in the short term.
A hyperlocal delivery business can concentrate on understanding the nuances of a customer group in a small geographic area and spend its management and financial resources to develop a viable presence more intensively.
However, both business models are typically constrained for margins, especially in categories such as food and grocery. As volume builds up, it’s feasible for the aggregator to transition at least part if not the entire business to an inventory-based model for improved fulfilment and better margins. By doing so the aggregator would, therefore, transition itself to being the retailer.
Customer acquisition has become very expensive over the last couple of years, with marketplaces and online retailers having driven up advertising costs – on top of that, customer stickiness is very low, which means that the platform has to spend similar amounts of money to re-acquire a large chunk of customers for each transaction.
The aggregator model also needs intensive recruitment of supply-side relationships. A key metric for an aggregator’s success is the number of local merchants it can mobilise quickly. After the initial intensive recruitment the merchants need to be equipped to use the platform optimally and also need to be able to handle the demand generated.
Most importantly, the acquisitions on both sides – merchants and customers – need to move in step as they are mutually-reinforcing. If done well, this can provide a higher stickiness with the consumer, which is a significant success outcome.
For all the attention paid to the entry and expansion of multinational retailers and nationwide ecommerce growth, retail remains predominantly a local activity. The differences among customers based on where they live or are located currently and the immediacy of their needs continue to drive diversity of shopping habits and the unpredictability of demand. Services and information based products may be delivered remotely, but with physical products local retailers do still have a better chance of servicing the consumer.
What has been missing on the part of local vendors is the ability to use web technologies to provide access to their customers at a time and in a way that is convenient for the customers. Also, importantly, their visibility and the ability to attract customer footfall has been negatively affected by ecommerce in the last 2 years. With penetration of mobile internet across a variety of income segments, conditions are today far more conducive for highly localised and aggregation-oriented services. So a hyperlocal platform that focusses on creating better visibility for small businesses, and connecting them with customers who have a need for their products and services, is an opportunity that is begging to be addressed.
It is likely that each locality will end up having two strong players: a market leader and a follower. For a hyperlocal to fit into either role, it is critical to rapidly create viability in each location it targets, and – in order to build overall scale and continued attractiveness for investors – quickly move on to replicate the model in another location, and then another. They can become potential acquisition targets for larger ecommerce companies, which could acquire to not only take out potential competition but also to imbibe the learnings and capabilities needed to deal with demand microcosms.
High stake bets are being placed on this table – and some being lost with business closures – but the game is far from being played out yet.
admin
February 28, 2011
Business
Standard, Mumbai, February 28, 2011
Sayantani
Kar (with inputs from Preeti Khicha)
When some of India’s big retail chains banded together recently to substitute Reckitt Benckiser’s products with private labels to protest the latter’s decision to cut sales margins on its products, they were doing something many global retailers have done with great success. Part of their overall strategy, especially for large chains in the US and Europe, is to develop quality private label products that complement other pieces in their marketing mix. While this is one way retailers can differentiate their firms from competition, it also helps them flex their muscles in their relationships with brand manufacturers. Indeed, retail giants Tesco, Walmart and Carrefour have a significant portion of their sales coming from private labels — ranging from 10 per cent for Costco and 50 per cent for Tesco.
India is a back runner in the private label race, but it is
catching up. A Shoppers Trend Study by Nielsen found awareness
about private labels has gone up from 64 per cent in 2009 to 78
per cent in 2010 across 11 cities in India. Nielsen Director (retail
services) Siddharthan Sundaram says, “Over the last three
to four months, we found an increased awareness of private labels
in categories such as staples, household products, personal care
products such as soaps, biscuits and packaged groceries.”
Thanks partly to the recent economic downturn, there is greater
acceptance — and even loyalty — to such brands in India,
say marketers. Future Group Business Head (private brands) Devendra
Chawla reasons, “A label on the shelf becomes a brand by
covering the two feet distance from the shelf to the trolley.
After all it is the consumer’s choice.” Even in the
toughest segment for private labels to crack — fast moving
consumer goods including food and personal care — store labels
claim share of 19-25 per cent.
Low-involvement categories such as household cleaners were among the first to see the entry of private labels (17-44 per cent of sale in modern trade), bringing in huge margin-lifts for modern retailers. In categories such as food products — jams, biscuits and staples — private labels today contribute more than 25 per cent of modern trade sales. Little wonder, retailers are now mining shopper data to make private labels shed their ‘low’ly tag — low involvement and low cost. Store chains are segmenting their brands according to consumer needs, combining more than one brand according to consumer behaviour, besides launching high-involvement premium products and innovative packaging to give national brands a run for their money.
Innovate or die
Retail innovation has had a big role to play in speeding up the
process of consumer acceptance. Future Group’s retail arm,
which includes Big Bazaar and Food Bazaar, calls its in-house
products ‘private brands’ not labels. It has a separate
team, headed by Devendra Chawla, to research and test FMCG products
before launch. The team has a range of private brands — Tasty
Treat, Fresh and Pure, Cleanmate, Caremate, Sach, John Miller,
Premium Harvest and Ektaa. Look at how it is using shopper data
to improve its products. The insight that kids found ketchup bottles
cumbersome and had to be served — making it inconvenient
if an adult was not around — led it to change the packaging
that in turn gave the brand a margin advantage. By offering ketchup
in pouches, it saved on the price of the glass bottle and freight
(pouches take up less space in a truck, hence more can be fitted
in). While ketchup in glass bottles continue to be Rs 99 for a
kilo, its Tasty Treat ketchup pouches come in Rs 59 packs.
By working with vendors it has also come up with interesting combinations — for example, its Tasty Treat jam has three small tubs packed as one unit, each tub containing a different flavour to offer consumers larger variety.
Retailers have now donned the hats of “product selectors” and “product developers” at the same time, points out Third Eyesight CEO Devangshu Dutta. “So far, most of the retailers were just selecting products from vendors which are mostly lower-priced knock-offs of manufacturer brands,” he says. Not any more.
Ashutosh Chakradeo, head (buying, merchandising and supply chain), HyperCity Retail, explains the process his company follows: “To develop food products, we identify vendors, tie up with food laboratories, chefs and consumers to be part of the tasting panels. Before launching a private label we do at least a month of consumer testing. We identify customers from our loyalty programme called Discovery Club, which tells us who buys a certain category of product. We give the relevant consumers our private label products for trial for a month. We meet the customers at their homes, take their feedback and these changes are incorporated into the private label brand.”
“Our stores act as research labs and are a constant source of feedback,” points out Chawla of Future Group. Chawla estimates 3-4 per cent of the sales of private labels are ploughed back into packaging and design innovation. Reliance Retail CEO Bijou Kurien says, “The teams are our main investment in private labels. Our 100-strong designers across all the formats help in coming up with product designs that fill a need gap or offer a few more features at the same price as national brands.” Reliance Retail has recently launched its own brand of watches priced Rs 149-199 which “no national player can offer” points out Kurien.
The edge
Most vendors directly supply to retailers’ distribution centres,
cutting out cost leakage at the distributor’s and carrying
and forwarding centres. Direct access to store shelves and aisles
also cuts out the high mainstream advertising costs that brands
have to bear. By clever product arrangements and in-store promotions,
retailers can sway the shopper and draw attention to the price
advantage. Chakradeo says, “We display private labels in
heavy footfall areas in the store. We complement displays —
so we keep our private label ketchup near the bakery.”
To tackle the tricky personal care category of face creams and shampoos that Aditya Birla Retail’s More chain has entered, it plans to communicate promotional offers straight to its loyalty programme members. “It will help us induce trials,” says Thomas Varghese, More’s CEO.
Bundling products is another way to woo the value-conscious consumer. Six months back, Future Group started bundling its private brands. Chawla says, “Take home-cleaning, which requires a floor cleaner, glass cleaner, toilet cleaner and utensil cleaner which we combined as a shudhikaran solution of our Cleanmate brand.” The combi-pack costs Rs 125, which would come to around Rs 220-250 if shoppers bought a la carte. The margins are still high at 26 per cent. “Vendors are assured of volumes,” points out Chawla.
What it also does is convert the fence-sitter who has not yet bought into a category. For example, consumers who avail of the shudhikaran solution also get into the habit of using glass cleaners — a category which has a small base and gets most of its sales from modern trade. Similarly, Future Group saw a 25 per cent spurt in the sales of soups when it clubbed soup mugs with its Tasty Treat soup packets based on the insight that Indians preference to sip their soup out of a coffee mug.
Don’t be surprised if you see MNC brands coming out with combo-offers for their products, way bigger than the occasional bucket with a detergent!
Growing up
There are signs the industry is evolving. Private labels in FMCG
are shedding their low-cost tags. But retailers know better than
to vacate low price-points altogether. Instead, they are segmenting
their brands just as a manufacturer brand would do. Chakradeo
of Hypercity says, “Over a period, we hope to increase the
stickiness and the differentiation our brands bring to our stores.
Particularly, in staples where we have seen our private label
business grow rapidly. This is a very quality and price-sensitive
category. We started with basic products but now we have premium
daals (lentils) and basmati rice as part of our portfolio.”
Future Group too has its ‘good, better, best’ policy firmly in place. In staples, the stores offer some products ‘loose’, such as rice, wheat, lentils, which is at the bottom of the ladder. Its Food Bazaar version of the products straddle the middle category, and above the two is its brand, Premium Harvest, which retails at a price higher than some manufacturer brands.
Stickiness may also result from the manner in which retailers are positioning their brands. Future Group’s brand Ektaa will retail regional food and staples across its stores in the country so that migrants can buy supplies they are comfortable with. Be it Govindbhog rice and kasundi (a rice variety and mustard sauce preferred by Bengalis), khakra (Gujarati snack) or murukku (loved by Tamilians). Boston Consulting Group Partner & Director Abheek Singhi says, “Indian retailers are not cut-pasting private label products from other markets but adapting them.”
Are private labels a risk worth taking? Chakradeo says, “The entire product formulation for our cleaners was done in partnership with Dow Chemicals, USA. We did not make any investment and we gave them a percentage of sales as fee. Investments are not huge in making private labels as in most cases it is partnered with vendors. It is more of operating expenses than capital expenditure.”
Future Group brought down logistics costs further by 6-8 per cent by appointing vendors in more than one region for 10 of its product categories to fill its distribution centres. Chakradeo adds, “As the volumes go up, we will be able to put up for backend infrastructure facilities for development and R&D.”
Should national brands be worried? Devangshu Dutta says, “As long as retailers have access to the production and development and have customers for it, the private labels will remain profitable.” India Equity Partners Operating Partner V Sitaram sums up, “In modern trade, though the market leaders will face some slip in market share, the number 3 or 4 brands might have a bigger problem in certain categories thanks to private labels.”
As retailers leverage consumer insights to deploy private labels more effectively, national brands are aggressively fighting the challenge. From sprucing up supply chains to galvanising in-store promotions, they are covering all bases. KPMG Executive Director Ramesh Srinivas says, “Earlier brands had to adjust between a modern trade and a general trade supply chain. The former had to be serviced directly at the stores or had their own supply chain while the latter used the manufacturer’s supply chain. Now, some brands separate modern trade teams and even distributors.”
Britannia Category Director (delight and lifestyle) Shalini Degan says, “We have divided our portfolio into three categories, A,B,C, each having its benchmark fill-rate. We don’t allow fill-rates to drop below those levels. Why the segmentation? We need to focus on brands which have a higher traction in modern trade when servicing it, else we might end up focusing on brands that are not modern trade-led.”
Fill-rates denote how often and to what accuracy the retailer’s orders for a product are supplied by the manufacturer. Low fill-rates could mean lost opportunity since the shopper sees an empty shelf or a private label instead of the brand she might have thought of picking up.
Samsung Vice-President and Business Head (home appliances) Mahesh Krishnan says, “We have gone in for central billing system 4-5 months back with all large-format retailers. Orders are tracked on a daily basis giving retailers more control over the chain.”
In other words, private labels are here to stay and will evolve as more and more chains gain national footprint and the economies of scale kick in. Dutta of Third Eyesight says, “Gross margins for organised retailers are still low compared to global standards: So, margin fights will continue for some time till retailers gain a bigger share of the pie.”
(Also read: The Private Label Maturity Model.)
