'Change Need To Be In Your Company's DNA If You Want To Grow In D2C' Good Glamm CEO Darpan Sanghvi and MamaEarth CEO Varun Alagh share the essentials for any venture to be successful in the D2C space

Speaking at the Global Unicorn Summit hosted by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), two of the most successful entrepreneurs in the D2C space, Darpan Sanghvi, CEO of The Good Glamm Group, and Varun Alagh, CEO of Honasa Consumer or MamaEarth, highlighted a few key areas that are quintessential for the success of a business.

Adapting to changes

Debating how the pandemic brought forth the importance of manoeuvrability for a business' survival, Sanghvi opined that adaptability to change is a quality which is inbuilt in any successful entrepreneur. For Good Glamm, the journey began with MyGlamm, a beauty brand, and continued over to acquisition of a number of entertainment businesses. The changes in Good Glamm's business journey were made to accommodate the changing market.

Read More: The Genesis and Vision Of Good Glamm Group

Based on his experience, Sanghvi observes that the propagation of an entrepreneur's business is dependent on how they are able to translate that trait of agility to their team. This is a challenging task, he admits.

Alagh agreed with the sentiment. In order to foster an agile work culture, Alagh says identification of the right talent is necessary. "At the time of hiring, it is essential to ascertain how comfortable a person is while the company's business undergoes changes," he said.

For a leader, maintain all channels for seamless communication with his team during the time of change should be a priority, Alagh further added. He said that his leadership team did multiple townhall meetings during the peak of the second wave of the pandemic just to ensure that people are comfortable with the changes during the pandemic, in their personal lives as well as at the business front.

Quality control

Both of the brands that the entrepreneurs head are regarded for their best-in-class quality of products. Alagh, who runs Mamaearth in collaboration with his wife Ghazal Alagh, said that the duo has been extremely pragmatic in their approach to the quality control of their product.

"You really need to be paranoid about the quality of your product. In our initial days, Ghazal used to personally check the quality of the products in every manufacturing batch. That practice has stayed with us even today," he said.

When the employees see that a heavy handed approach that the co-founders are taking on the quality of the product, it automatically trickles down across all levels of the organisation.

"Without ensuring adequate quality control, you cannot build a brand. I hope to see the inculcation of blockchain technology in making the systems and processes more transparent, and hence, boost up quality control measures," Sanghvi adds.

Adoption of Q-Commerce

Sanghvi is optimistic that the implementation of Q-commerce will take D2C a step. "Adoption of quick commerce is surely to boost D2C. It provides customers instant gratification, which will further add on to bridging the gap between offline and online retail. We are definitely investing in q-commerce to make quick deliveries and hence, expand our reach," Sanghvi expressed.

Sanghvi believes that the realization of the full benefits of Q-commerce will be sooner than later. Adding on to what lies ahead for the sector in the future, Sanghvi believes that the offline segment of the market will have to be a little experimentational in their approach to business.

Also Read: Is Quick Commerce a Scalable Business?

As people are becoming more comfortable with shopping online, they'll have to change a little to compete.

As for Alagh, he believes emerging trends will continue to shape the market. "The trend of increased beauty penetration in India is just scratching the surface in India. We'll see a bigger market in the near future," he said.