CavinKare: Leveraging the D2C Boom The company expects to generate 25 per cent of its turnover from e-commerce in the next five years

The pandemic has served as a booster shot for the growing D2C (direct to consumer) industry in India. The FMCG goods that were earlier available in our nearby kirana stores, have now found a special spot on the Internet. Now, brands are even coming up with Internet specific launches to expand their product portfolio.

Ditching redundant methods, companies have set up building blocks and have made e-commerce a special focus division with capabilities across D2C, marketplace and digital marketing. CavinKare, is one such FMCG company, which has not fallen into the redundancy loop. The company is clear about its milestones and perceives personal care, beauty, foods and pet care as its major growth drivers in its D2C journey.

"D2C helps us come closer to our consumer. The space also helps our idea labs churn multiple concepts and test them in real time with pilots. With our 30 years of inhouse R&D experience, we have so much more to offer to our consumers and D2C is helping us do all that in a more structured way," said Amudhavalli Ranganathan, director of e-commerce at CavinKare, adding that the company expects to generate 25 per cent of its turnover from e-commerce in the next five years.

CavinKare has launched Buds and Berries which is one of its marquee projects. It was launched in October last year exclusively with Amazon and now it is available on Buds and Berries website as well.

Buds & Berries is a personal care brand, which infuses the goodness of nature in its hair care and skin care products. CavinKare ventured into the men's grooming segment in 2021 with the launch of personal care brand Biker's. "The idea was to democratize clean beauty products with a premium look, feel and make it accessible to the masses. We have always been known for our innovation capability and it gives us the opportunity to work on more than 10-plus D2C brand concepts now," said Ranganathan adding that the industry's overall e-commerce space is expected to be contributing to double digits by the end of this decade.

Some of the challenges the company faced during its expansion was to front-load human resources and capital. Initially, the company hired a small team of digital marketing, e-commerce marketing experts and then quickly led some successful projects.

"Our first D2C project CavinKart.com was launched within four weeks and the e-commerce marketplace sales doubled. Now, we have a dedicated team of 50-plus professionals building ideas and delivering hyper growth. The other challenge is to get the organization ready with respect to the e-com ways of working as the area requires much more agility," added Ranganathan.

The company has expanded its footprint into major segments such as dairy, personal care, professional care, food & beverage, retail and e-commerce. The brand portfolio consists of shampoos, hair wash powders, oils, deodorants, retail salon products, among others.