India’s consumer-brand ecosystem is entering a pivotal decade, shaped by a surge of digital-first D2C brands, rising consumption across Tier 2 & 3 cities, and a rapidly evolving demand economy. What began as a metro-led D2C movement has now taken deep root nationwide, driven by digital adoption, rising incomes, and growing brand affinity. At the same time, consumer expectations are shifting, driven by quick commerce habits, creator-led discovery and Gen Z’s cultural influence on what India buys, how it shops and which brands it trusts.
To address this landscape, DSG Consumer Partners (DSGCP), the first venture capital firm dedicated to consumer brands, and Meta, in collaboration with ViralMint, a marketing and creative agency helping brands to strategise growth, have launched the Zero to ₹100 Cr Playbook, a comprehensive operating system built from the actual execution of 100+ founders and thousands of campaigns. The dataset surfaces the patterns defining growth today: more than 70% brands rely on Meta as their primary acquisition channel; 62% founders cite creative fatigue as their biggest bottleneck; and 55% report under-investing in CRM and retention.
The Playbook decodes how modern consumer brands acquire, retain, and scale; identifies bottlenecks across marketing, operations and profitability; and assesses maturity in analytics and retention. Developed with participation from high-growth brands across beauty, F&B, fashion, health, home, and lifestyle. Beauty and health brands accounted for nearly half of the entire dataset, making the insights highly relevant for consumer-first categories.
Why Every Brand Needs a New Operating System Now
India is entering its strongest consumption cycle yet, presenting a lucrative opportunity for brands. By 2030, Gen Z and Millennials will form over half the population, with 350+ million Gen Z consumers, a cohort larger than the population of the United States. Rapid income growth and deeper digital penetration are accelerating premiumisation and expanding the online consumer base. Post-pandemic tailwinds have also fuelled a surge of new founders, reshaping categories across beauty, fashion, F&B, health and home.
But this wave of opportunity comes with execution pressure. India’s consumer landscape is scaling faster than most teams can keep pace, reflected in rising creative fatigue, broken attribution models and operational complexities. Against this backdrop, the new playbook cuts through the chaos delivering clarity on what truly moves the needle now: Product-Market Fit (PMF) validation, creative velocity, retention engines, operational maturity, and a shift toward profitability-led scaling.
What Founders Are Really Saying
Conversations with 100+ founders reveal that India’s fastest-growing brands win on fundamentals – clear PMF, disciplined data tracking, strong unit economics, creative velocity, and early retention focus. Founders also admit that performance mistakes, pricing missteps, and weak creative systems slow growth far more than budgets. This underscores a simple truth – the future belongs to brands with discipline, not just ambition. In a booming D2C landscape, capability gaps in operations, brand-building, and supply chain depth are widening the divide between breakout brands and those stuck in the performance plateau.
The Playbook decodes the four-stage journey every modern consumer brand must master. The Zero to ₹100 Cr Growth Ladder: Validation (₹0–1 Cr): Achieving clear Product-Market Fit; Repeatability (₹1–10 Cr): Establishing strong retention loops; Systems (₹10–50 Cr): Enhancing operational and analytical maturity; Leadership (₹50–100 Cr): Expanding category leadership and brand defensibility. Brands that mature across these stages, particularly those who track CM2 (Contribution Margin 2), outperform peers by 2.3×.
Creator Systems Power High-Velocity Brands
Creators have now become one of the most reliable growth levers for modern consumer brands. Today, 54% of brands allocate 10%-25% of their marketing budgets to influencers, with nano and micro-creators consistently delivering 5x-6x higher engagement than mega influencers. As discovery increasingly shifts towards creator-led content, brands are building always-on creator pipelines – not for one-off campaigns, but for continuous storytelling, social proof, and high-performing UGC that boosts both acquisition and retention. What was once a marketing add-on has now become a fundamental driver of scale for digital-first brands.
Talking about the significance of the Playbook, Pooja Shirali, Vice President, DSG Consumer Partners, said, “Across 90+ consumer brands we’ve partnered with at DSGCP, one truth is clear: brands that master Meta’s ecosystem don’t just grow, they change their entire trajectory through strategic clarity and disciplined execution. This Playbook offers the operational compass every founder needs to scale confidently and sustainably. It’s the toolkit to allow founders to have clarity on day one. This playbook makes it clear that the real drivers of scale have less to do with viral moments, and everything to do with the long-term fundamentals that make milestones like the first ₹100 Cr predictable, not accidental.”
Said Gaurav Jeet Singh, Director, Agency and VC Partnerships (India), Meta, “Digital discovery in India is today driven by new formats like Reels, creator-led influence and shifting consumer behaviour. In this environment, brands that build creative velocity and iterate quickly are the ones that continue to move efficiently. At Meta, we see these patterns every day, and the Zero to ₹100 Cr Playbook translates those platform learnings into frameworks the wider ecosystem can apply. It offers a consolidated view of what actually improves efficiency over time, and reflects our commitment to supporting the next stage of maturity in India’s digital commerce landscape.”
Rohan Dighe, Founder ViralMint said, “India’s consumer landscape is transforming faster than most brands can adapt, and what founders need today isn’t more information—it’s direction. Our purpose at ViralMint has always been to bring that clarity to the ecosystem. With DSGCP and Meta, we created this Playbook to give every founder a definitive operating system for scale: how to validate PMF with conviction, build creative engines that never slow down, strengthen retention early, and scale with profitability as a core principle. If founders follow these systems with discipline, they won’t just grow—they’ll build brands that endure for the next decade.”
With this playbook, DSGCP, Meta and ViralMint aim to equip India’s next generation of consumer brands with the clarity, systems and benchmarks required to scale efficiently.
