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Interesting workshops, insightful conversations, and a D2C community helping each other power their growth stories have essentially defined the successful D2C Carwaan meetups so far hosted by YourStory in association with Shiprocket. After Chennai, Jaipur, Hyderabad, and Indore, the D2C Carwaan recently met in Kolkata to find new-age D2C companies in the city.

Highlighting what it takes for D2C brands to build a successful business, Praful Poddar, SVP – Product Management, Shiprocket states, “Building a successful user journey is a seven-step process which includes marketing channels, buying experience, checkout experience, order processing, customer service, feedback gathering and customer retention.”

Here’s a lowdown on the key highlights shared by Praful as a part of his keynote address at the Kolkata edition of D2C Carwaan:

Derive insightful data

Data plays a key role in helping businesses scale and make crucial decisions. “Drilling down data to a point where it gives you key actionable insights is important to build a great user experience. From deploying marketing budgets to the right channels to optimising your shipping costs and to ensuring that your inventories are put to best possible use, leveraging the right data tools can go a long way in supporting a brand’s growth story,” shares Praful.

Penetrate into Bharat

While the market buzz claims there are almost 150 million transacting consumers, the real numbers are much lower than that. The greater opportunity now lies in the Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities where new consumers are now exploring online space for a variety of products and services. “Brands need to think upon a few factors to cater to the needs of the untapped market. Whether the product is fit for the new market? Is there a need to innovate in terms of variants, sizes, price point etc? What are the right marketing channels to reach out to these new sets of customers? And lastly, building an appropriate shopping experience for them,” he adds.

Focus on profitability

Praful also stresses upon the need of building a sustainable and profitable business right from the start and not at the later stage. The macroeconomics factor globally points at having strong models that can sustain uncertainties. Moreover, reducing the dependency on VC funding is also important looking at the current funding scenario. “Companies with healthy unit economics definitely have an edge to stand out in this competitive market,” he says.

Sustainability is key

We are living in a consumer aware market where more and more people are now talking about buying environment-friendly products. “As a brand, you need to focus on reducing the carbon footprint, reusable packaging, eliminating plastic to cater to the new user base that prioritises sustainability,” says Praful.

Leveraging enablement tools

Concluding his address, Praful puts the focus on a forward looking way of doing business and leveraging enablement tools to simplify the scaling journey. “Technology can solve various business problems in a seamless manner. Some of the key enablers use the best of tech to offer scalable solutions in terms of deriving data, automation, website building as well as streamlining end-to-end delivery experience. Modernising the overall business operations is said to be the key to building a successful brand,” he adds.