Arpit Jain

Most D2C brands think customers buy after “comparing prices.” They don’t. They buy after comparing feelings. Let me tell you a quick story. A founder once asked me, “We’re giving ₹200 off, but conversions didn’t move. Should we increase the discount?” I said, “Maybe the discount isn’t the problem. Maybe you’re putting it in the wrong mental bucket.” He looked confused. So I explained: People don’t treat every rupee the same. We divide money into invisible categories in our heads. And each category has its own rules. In India, these buckets look like this: Salary money → think twice UPI cashback → free hai, kharch kar Discounts → smart buy COD → safe buy Credit card → adjust ho jaayega Reward points → use before it expires Same ₹200. Completely different behaviour. And the offer only works when it lands in the right bucket. A ₹200 discount hits the “smart decision” bucket. ₹200 cashback hits the “free money” bucket. ₹200 store credit hits the “already paid” bucket. EMI hits the “manageable bucket.” So if you’re selling: → essentials, lean on discounts → impulse buys, push cashback → high-ticket, use EMI/BNPL → premium, offer exclusivity or credits And if you target: → new buyers, reduce risk → repeat buyers, reward them → high-intent shoppers, justify the upgrade → premium buyers, appeal to identity The founder ran a simple test: He replaced ₹200 off with ₹150 cashback + ₹50 store credit. Same money. Different bucket. Conversions went up. That’s Mental Accounting in action. People don’t buy based on price. They buy based on how the price feels. Shift the bucket, and you shift the sale.

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Media SaaS unicorn Amagi has filed the red herring prospectus (RHP) for its initial public offering (IPO), a couple of months after receiving SEBI’s approval for its DRHP. The IPO will open on January 13 and subsequently close on January 16, making the company the first new-age tech company to list in 2026. Anchor bidding will take place on January 12. The company has significantly cut the size of its issue from what was initially proposed. It has reduced the fresh issue size to INR 816 Cr from the initially proposed INR 1,020 Cr, reflecting a 25% cut. Further, the offer for sale (OFS) component of the IPO has also been trimmed by 22% to 2.69 Cr shares from 3.41 Cr shares earlier. #Media #SaaS

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India’s OTT market is not growing in one direction anymore. It’s splitting into two extremes — and both are booming. According to The Ormax Media OTT Audience Report 2025, India’s OTT universe has reached 601.2 million viewers, growing 9.9% YoY. But the real story isn’t the headline number. It’s what’s happening at the edges of consumption. Two formats are exploding — for completely different reasons: Connected TV (CTV) • 129.2 million users in 2025 • 85% growth in just one year (69.7 Mn → 129.2 Mn) • Likely closer to 150 million today CTV represents India’s upgrade moment: Big screens Family co-viewing Long-form, immersive content Urban & affluent households 46% of CTV users are SVOD audiences Yet interestingly, 54% are still AVOD — proving smart TVs have gone far beyond paid subscribers. Metros + 10L+ towns contribute 45% of the audience. Micro Dramas • 73.2 million viewers in <1 year • Likely nearing 100 million already Micro Dramas represent India’s scale moment: Mobile-first Vertical viewing Short, high-frequency consumption Personal, snackable storytelling 75% of Micro Drama viewers come from AVOD 55% of the audience is rural India This is OTT built for mobile-only access and low entry barriers. Here’s the most important insight: These audiences barely overlap. The overlap between CTV and Micro Drama viewers is <15 million users. They’re not fighting for the same screen. They’re not competing for the same moments. They’re solving for entirely different viewing contexts. What this tells us: India is entering a two-device OTT future. Living room → premium, shared, long-form Mobile phone → personal, frequent, snackable Both are growing in parallel, driven by different economic and behavioural forces. My take: The biggest mistake platforms can make right now is building for a single OTT user. The winners will be those who: Design content formats with precision Monetise differently across AVOD & SVOD Respect that India doesn’t watch the same way everywhere OTT in India is no longer one market. It’s a segmented ecosystem — and that’s where the opportunity lies. If you want to launch OTT, micro-dramas, or scale your own video platform, let's talk. 📩 DM open 📞 +91 9818399142 🌐 https://mogiio.com #ShortVideo #VernacularOTT #OTTPlatforms #MicroDramas #ConnectedTV

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Why is it that out of the 4000 D2C brands doing $1M of monthly revenue on Shopify, not a single brand is from India? The answer is a mix of technical and cultural reasons. I will start with cultural. Because that is valid not just for D2C but for other industries like SAAS and tech as well. 1. Our processes rely on people instead of systems. And as warm and loving as that sounds, it simply doesn’t work at scale. It is also the reason why Indian orgs have so much internal corruption as they scale. 2. We are a risk averse nation. Government jobs. Education. Safety net. These are the values typically passed down and get hardcoded in our DNAs. So even when we start a business, concepts of credit and debt are not used as efficiently as they should be. Heck even our investor community is the most risk averse in the world. Everybody wants to copy and follow what’s working. Nobody wants to take the leap and innovate. 3. Entitlement comes very fast Anybody who has earned a couple of crores in their lives thinks they are God. Several socio economic reasons for this that I won’t get into here. 4. We care too much about not looking poor. We want to spend like the west because it “looks” cool. A person on a 50k/m salary has a 1L iphone. A person who earns 20L a year as a 40L car. A D2C business owner who earns 10L per month pays 4L in salaries. A founder who just raised a round of funding will overspend on IIM/IIT talent and swanky offices they don’t need. 5. We outsource/delegate too early. Because labour is cheap, we are quick to hire. We don’t do our dishes and laundry at home so then why would we do the dirty work of our own business? (Entitlement again) ______________ Moving on to the non cultural factors now. Specific to D2C only. 6. Founders have no grip on their P&L fundamentals. Nobody knows what their real breakeven roas is in the 0-1 stage and they keep pumping in more money until they run out. 7. Marketing, Finance, Inventory, Creatives & branding are all deeply correlated. But founders are not building businesses trying to prioritise all of these together. The founder who is great at branding ignores finance metrics completely. The founder great at performance ignores branding completely. And so on. 8. Founders don’t know enough about their own businesses. Remember point 5? This causes a gap. And this gap keeps growing with scale. 9. We are 5 years behind western markets in technology adoption. Purely because of points 2 (risk) and 5 (early delegation). Case in point -> First party data adoption. This is the one single technology switch that has enabled US brands to keep scaling without dropping MER and nobody in India is talking about it. But why is nobody talking about it? Because the people directly responsible for growth are MBA peeps, not founders themselves. These MBA peeps are even more risk averse. This would have never happened if the founder had upskilled and kept up with what’s new in the world.

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Be honest: how many times have you looked at a hotel laundry menu and decided to just re-wear the dirty shirt? A few days ago, Snapdeal co-founder Kunal Bahl shared on X that he was billed ₹5,900 plus taxes for hotel laundry for just 7 everyday garments. That's over ₹800 per item!! Let that sink in. This isn't an isolated case. I've personally experienced this across hotels, from 5-star to budget properties. Laundry inside hotels is almost always expensive, and most travellers do not even consider sending one piece of clothing unless it is absolutely unavoidable. When the price-to-value is this unpredictable, guests don't just feel overcharged; they feel alienated. They use it once and swear, "never again." As Founder & CEO of Laundrokart.com, an on-demand laundry startup in Bengaluru, I identified this gap early. This is exactly why we built LaundroKart around four non-negotiables: ✅ A seamless app experience. ✅ Doorstep pickup and drop. ✅ Professional cleaning that extends fabric life. ✅ Bills that don't give you a mini heart attack. We don't just do dry cleaning cloths, shoes, and carpets, but also do steam ironing, darning, and dyeing. It is a complete wardrobe care ecosystem, not just laundry. In a world where everything is becoming on-demand and predictable, laundry shouldn’t feel like a financial surprise. If you’re a hotel, hostel, co-living space, or a frequent traveller who wants fairly priced and reliable quick laundry service, download the LaundroKart app/website and schedule a wash at your convenience.

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Personal care is one of the top 5 categories flagged for violations by ASCI in the 2024-2025 Annual report. If you are building or own a personal care brand, strengthen your brand reputation with stronger compliance now. Find out how 👇

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Most early-stage D2C brands shouldn't run Meta ads. There. I said it. I know how this sounds. Meta ads are the default playbook for every D2C brand in India right now. Every agency pitches them. Every founder asks for them. Every "D2C growth" course starts with them. But here's what nobody says out loud: Meta ads are a scaling tool being used as a discovery tool and it's quietly destroying early-stage brands. Let me explain. Meta ads require something most early-stage brands don't have yet: A proven offer. Not a good product. Not a nice brand story. Not a clean Shopify store. A proven offer meaning you already know that when the right person sees your product explained the right way at the right price they buy. Without that proof Meta ads don't help you find customers. They help you find out expensively that you haven't figured out your customer yet. What actually happens ? Early-stage brand launches Meta campaign. Week 1 : Low CTR. Agency says creative is the problem. New creatives. Week 2 : Better CTR. Low conversions. Agency says landing page is the problem. New landing page. Week 3 : Better conversions. High return rate. Agency says targeting is the problem. New audiences. Week 4 : ₹3 Lakhs spent. Still no clarity. Founder is frustrated. Agency asks for more budget to "optimise." Sound familiar? The problem was never the creative. Never the landing page. Never the targeting. The problem was that the brand had no business running paid acquisition before validating the offer organically. What early-stage D2C brands should do instead: Step 1: Validate on Amazon first. Amazon customers are searching for solutions not scrolling past ads. If your product can't convert an intent-driven customer on Amazon it will definitely not convert a cold, distracted Meta audience. Amazon is brutal, honest, and free to test on. Step 2: Earn your first 500 customers manually. WhatsApp groups. Local communities. Instagram DMs. Friends of friends. Ugly. Slow. Unscalable. Your first 500 customers will tell you exactly: → Why they bought → What they almost didn't buy because of → What they'd tell a friend That information is worth more than any Meta pixel ever will be. Step 4: Only then run Meta ads. Now you have: → A proven offer → Real customer language to write copy with → Organic proof that the product resonates → A retention system so CAC actually makes sense Now Meta ads work. Because now you're scaling something that already works not funding the search for something that might. The brands that figure this out early: They enter paid with conviction not desperation. They know their customer better than Meta's algorithm does. And they scale faster because every rupee spent is amplifying a proven machine — not patching a broken one. The brands that don't: They burn ₹5–10 Lakhs "learning." Then wonder why D2C is so hard. D2C isn't hard. Scaling something unvalidated is hard. Meta just makes it expensive.

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