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Lately, several studies have linked lifestyle issues like smoking, lack of exercise and obesity to the severity of Covid-19 and its long-term repercussions. However, given the newfound health awareness in the wake of the pandemic, people are now moving towards healthier alternatives and focussing more on their physical and mental well-being as these ensure primary prevention against many disorders and chronic medical conditions.

The popular sentiment has also translated into consumers’ buying behaviour. A McKinsey report says that people now spend more on products and services that promote better health. This shift has prompted both deep-pocketed players and new brands to introduce a plethora of health-focussed offerings ranging from fitness and wellness to organic and natural foods to health and nutrition supplements.

Set up in 2019, Delhi-based Wellcurve is a significant player in this space. The brand has built a community of like-minded people to promote healthy living, help users find the right products and support them in meeting their health goals.

The brand features a unique combination of a marketplace and a content platform, enabling users to shop for healthier food alternatives and engage and interact with health and nutrition experts, doctors, home chefs and fitness enthusiasts to discover healthy recipes and health tips.

Wellcurve currently has 1,800 SKUs and boasts a community of more than 200 health experts who engage with 20K customers on the platform.

“We offer our customers a curated assortment of healthier food alternatives across 90 brands and assist them in making better buying choices through community support,” said Nikhil Mehra, Founder and CEO of wellness brand Wellcurve.

Watch Mehra talk about the company’s growth, the challenges it faced, its plans to move forward and more.

Today, Wellcurve processes as many as 500 orders a day, but the startup faced its own set of challenges in the beginning.

Slow demand used to hurt the startup’s growth, but Mehra soon realised the importance of customer experience in building brand stickiness and improving retention.

“Earlier, customers were just part of a business’s marketing strategy. But now they have become the centre of brand experience, right from acquisition to post-purchase,” he said.

Customers today value experience as much as the products, and brands can capitalise on this trend by using the right customer-centric tools. As customer interaction is an integral part of customer experience, many brands are turning to marketing automation to build personalised relationships with their customers.

In September 2021, the wellness brand partnered with the martech platform Wigzo to send customised pop-ups on the website and automated its email, WhatsApp and SMS campaigns. This was done by creating customer segments based on preferred product categories.

Campaign automation led to a 20% jump in overall conversion rate, the startup claimed.

“Before using Wigzo’s solutions, our repeat purchase rate was below 20%. But now we are witnessing a repeat purchase rate of nearly 40%,” said Mehra.

The brand’s revenue also grew 15x between January 2021 and January 2022.

Riding high on the D2C (direct-to-customer) wave, the startup aims to introduce 40 new D2C brands across its ecosystem. It is also planning to pursue the Thrasio model and build a wellness portfolio by acquiring small brands and early stage startups.