Two D2C brands, both at ₹100 crore. One took six years, the other took thirteen months. Which is worth more?
Welcome back to Paradox Weekly, a Masters' Union newsletter, where we break down the ideas, trends, and contradictions shaping business today.
FMCG companies have spent at least ₹4,600 crore buying D2C brands since 2020.
Marico alone made three acquisitions in three weeks this February.
HUL, ITC, Emami, Nykaa, all are on a shopping spree.
Turn off the ads and the revenue takes a massive hit.
At Masters' Union, we've incubated several D2C startups and I speak to those founders constantly.
Almost all of them start with the same blueprint: spend on Meta, get customers, grow revenue, figure out retention later.
But the "later" never comes.
Two brands to think about
In 2018, Vibha Harish quit Rolls-Royce.
She was looking for supplements that could be trusted for PCOS but she struggled to find one.
So she bootstrapped Cosmix with ₹20 lakh of personal savings in 2019, rented a 1BHK in Bangalore, and started mixing plant-based blends with one employee.
Six years later: it had ₹100+ crore ARR profitably with 22% EBITDA margins.
Marico paid ₹375 crore valuation for 60% of the company.
Now look at SuperYou.
Ranveer Singh and Nikunj Biyani launched it in November 2024. It raised an undisclosed amount from Rainmatter and Gruhas pre-launch.
They hit ₹150 crore ARR in thirteen months, but no profitability was disclosed.
So both brands crossed ₹100 crore ARR in wellness.
And today SuperYou is worth almost twice as much as Cosmix.
The market values speed of growth and retention.
Look at the repeat rate.
When customers don't return, you have to keep buying new ones. And every year, new ones cost more.
A DSG Consumer Partners study of 100+ Indian D2C founders found over 70% rely on Meta as their primary acquisition channel, and many struggle with rising CAC/unstable ROAS alongside under-investment in retention.
They're losing money on every customer they acquire, and they keep acquiring.
For instance:
Take WOW Skin Science for instance, when they cut ad spends by 46%, their revenue fell 10% immediately. Now seeking a buyer at close to half their old valuation.
Mamaearth spends 40% of its revenue on advertising, and their stock is down 63% from its IPO peak.
Bombay Shaving Company did ₹200 crore in revenue and lost ₹62 crore and they spent ₹1.31 for every rupee earned.
What Vibha actually did for retention.
Four things, she:
Sold on her own website.
60% of Cosmix revenue comes from cosmix.in, meaning she owns the customer data, email list, and the reorder cycle.
When you sell through a marketplace like Amazon, etc, the platform owns all of that.
Educated instead of marketed.
Constantly sharing content about adaptogens, hormone health, sleep science, she refused what she calls "inadequacy marketing” i.e, the kind that tells you something's wrong with you before selling a fix.
Education builds trust, which brings people back without a discount code, and that's where the 55% comes from.
Stayed small on purpose.
Shipping about 5,000-6,000 units a day, with just 35 employees and zero VC money until the Marico deal.
She grew at a rate her margins could support instead of burning capital to hit a number that looks good on a pitch deck.
Built community before scale.
Attending in-person events and direct conversations with customers, building relationships. By the time she scaled, the retention was already there.
Most D2C brands try to build retention after they've scaled but that doesn't work.
Fun fact: Licious does ₹100 crore monthly with 85% coming from repeat customers.
Here's my read
D2C was supposed to cut out the middleman.
What ended up happening is FMCG distributors getting replaced with Meta’s algorithm. So the middleman never disappeared.
The invoice just comes from Menlo Park instead of Mumbai.
The paradox: the fastest D2C brands are usually the most fragile.
Speed almost always means ad dependency, which means your business collapses the moment you stop paying for attention.
This made D2C become FMCG’s R&D instead of competition.
The founder-led community energy for which they pay a premium is the first thing that gets diluted.
Founders who build for retention get acquired, and the acquirers who paid for that retention replace it with distribution.
So if you're building a D2C brand, try this:
Turn off paid acquisition for one week, the revenue that survives is your brand.
Everything else is rented.
What's your repeat rate?
I genuinely want to know.
I read every email.
Until next week,
Pratham