India’s ecommerce landscape has been undergoing positive growth with direct-to-customer (D2C) brands making strides in various segments and disrupting the retail market.

Offering the customers a hyper-personalised, seamless, and consistent experience, D2C brands are now fast adopting the omnichannel strategy to remain competitive. Experts have also reiterated that brands today need to have solid online and offline presence to aspire for the next frontier of growth. Many Indian D2C brands have benefitted by adopting the omnichannel approach and are enjoying widespread reach across the country.

Since its inception in 2015, Bombay Shaving Company (BSC) has established itself as a premium personal care brand for men and women.

The D2C brand has grown to become a category creator, disruptor, and leader in the men’s grooming category, changing the landscape of grooming and hair removal products in India. Leading with the vision of taking the brand to ‘2 crore bathrooms in India, with 5 products, creating 10 minutes of happiness everyday’, BSC has become one of the country’s most loved brands.

Early last year, the company secured Rs 160 crore in a Series C funding round led by Malabar Investments. The round also saw participation from Patni Advisors, Singularity AMC, and well known HNIs. BSC will be using these funds to power its ambitious plans of 5-10x growth over the next eight to 12 quarters.

Strengthening the omnichannel approach

In an official statement released early last year, BSC said it plans to scale operations to Rs 500 crore top line with an omnichannel presence in the next two years.

“The idea is to continue to grab share in the categories that we are present in,via both online and offline channels,” Shantanu Deshpande, Founder and CEO, Bombay Shaving Company told YourStory in an interview on the company’s Series C funding round. The company is also going to invest in product innovation, offline sales distribution, and inherent brand building.

“Right now we are present in 35,000-40,000 stores but the idea is to [reach] two lakh stores and maintain the same share,” Deshpande told YourStory, reiterating that the company wants to build market share in the offline space while continuing to maintain share in the online space.

Strong ecosystem partnerships for effective growth

To cater to rising demand in a more effective manner and to penetrate deeper into both online and offline spaces, BSC joined hands with one of India’s leading and fully integrated logistics providers, Delhivery.

“Brands today need a one-stop solution where they get all logistics and supply chain services, minimising the need for multi-handling. There are limited players in the market providing a full suite of logistics services and with BSC, we were excited to partner with a brand where we could add value and play a pivotal role in their growth journey,” said Anubhav Bansal, Senior Director – Express Parcel, Delhivery.

Delhivery enabled BSC in its endeavour of expanding its range of offerings and helped it benefit from the omnichannel approach. “Delhivery is also providing freight transportation services to stores and large format retail (LFR) chains beyond the usual customer deliveries using express parcel services. We are ensuring efficient transportation of goods to their physical retail locations as well. We have become a one-stop destination for all their logistics and supply chain needs, thereby simplifying processes and accelerating growth,” added Bansal, highlighting Delhivery’s USP in providing bespoke, cost-efficient solutions to help customers increase sales volumes.

Delhivery and BSC launched a special volumetric size for logistics of orders placed through online marketplaces or aggregators. “We had high volumes of single piece units, varying around the range of 100 gm and 150 ml. Some of the websites through which we sell our products charged us in 500 gm slabs because that’s their slab for any product. Our partnership with Delhivery helped us rework these slabs,” said Abhishek Agrawal, Senior Vice President – Supply Chain and Sourcing, Bombay Shaving Company.

These personalised solutions helped BSC to focus on increasing volumes without increasing losses in last-mile logistics.

Delhivery also helped BSC set up KPI dashboards for tracking deliveries and resolving delays, especially those caused due to wrong or incomplete addresses, in a timely manner and helped improve customer experience. “With Delhivery’s KPI dashboard, we were able to have a more accurate view of our deliveries and were able to track and solve the issues at a greater pace. Their customer resolution WhatsApp feature helped us increase our customer satisfaction metrics by 15%,” Agrawal said.

With high internet penetration, most D2C brands today are exploring various aspects of cracking a seamless delivery experience for customers beyond the metropolitan cities. For BSC, Delhivery’s vast pincode reach – delivering to 18,500+ pincodes – played a major role in expanding their customer base to the length and breadth of the country.

“Their pincode reach also helped us in serving customers during natural disasters such as floods, restrictions due to other reasons, etc. We were able to reach a lot of unserviceable areas that we weren’t able to with other logistics and supply chain partners. Additionally, Delhivery used technology to identify and flag fake addresses and regular return-to-origin (RTO) and this helped in reducing RTOs by 50%,” Agrawal told YourStory.

Gunning for international expansion and IPO

Deshpande had earlier told YourStory that BSC has a timeline of 10-12 quarters for an IPO.

With a portfolio of 100+ SKUs, BSC claims to have served over three million customers across channels and is steadily working towards building both men’s and women’s brands. It will also continue to leverage the good response it has received from the Indian diaspora overseas and in the Asian subcontinent.

BSC now plans to expand operations to the United States, Europe, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, and is looking to achieve the Rs 1,000 crore revenue mark in the coming years.

“We are confident that with our KPI-driven approach and passion for technology and innovation, we will be able to support BSC and many other D2C brands in their business expansion and growth journey,” said Bansal, highlighting Delhivery’s efforts to be the most able ecosystem partner for successful and emerging D2C brands.