For online brands, opportunities in offline, quick commerce, and Thrasio models

Mumbai: Online-focused or direct-to-consumer brands should consider venturing into offline retail as soon as they hit the ₹100-crore mark to prevent stagnation of revenues and open up sales channels, said Swati Kulkarni, director at early-stage venture capital firm Fireside Ventures.

“At the ₹100-crore scale, brands should consciously think of going offline. I’m not suggesting bombarding the general trade channel with your products, but start small. Try it out in a city or in a small cluster and see how it is working,” Kulkarni said during a panel discussion at the Mint India Investment Summit 2025.

However, scaling offline retail is very different online as it requires clarity and sharpness of stock-keeping units, Kulkarni said. “It is very important for brands to make note of what is really selling. In quick commerce and e-commerce, it doesn’t cost much to keep listing products, but in offline retail it will cost shelf space.”

However, making mistakes in the initial part of the journey could help prevent similar errors when the brand’s revenue hits ₹500 crore, Kulkarni said.

The quick-commerce channel

Speakers at Mint’s investment summit also highlighted the potential of quick commerce, which has emerged as a fast-growing sales channel for many consumer brands.

Deep Bajaj, co-founder of Sirona Hygiene who recently bought back the company from content-to-commerce firm The Good Glamm Group, said the quick-commerce sales channel had unlocked a new layer of general trade for many brands.

“Delivering something like a period pain patch in 10 minutes is really impressing the customer. Today, quick commerce has made it a possibility and consumer behaviour is also witnessing a shift,” he said.

However, brands selling products having higher order values and wanting to engage with consumers on a regular basis will continue to see better value from their own websites, Bajaj noted.

Food and beverage as well as beauty and personal care brands are set to benefit highly from quick commerce, said Fireside’s Kulkarni. “Quick commerce is essentially mimicking the behaviour of general trade. Companies have to evolve their supply chain to suit quick-commerce needs.”

The Thrasio model

The Thrasio model, a so-called roll-up strategy that became popular a few years ago in which a company acquires and seeks to scale up a portfolio of online-first consumer brands, faces the challenge of keeping up with the supply chains of multiple companies at the same time, said Sirona’s Bajaj.

“This is what unfortunately happened to a lot of roll-up companies in India that acquired many brands when the parent brand needed a lot more care,” he said.

“With the failure rate of mergers and acquisitions standing at over 70%, it is critical to venture into the roll-up model after acquiring and integrating the first few brands efficiently,” Bajaj added.