D2C Industry Benchmarks: Put Your Business Performance In Context 

We are excited to announce the launch of D2C Industry Benchmarks for businesses in India. The D2C Industry Benchmarks will help businesses put their performance metrics in context, offering insights into the segment-level benchmarks. It will help D2C businesses gain a deeper understanding of their performance and help them set clear goals. 

We have worked hard over the last few years to help D2C businesses grow, and this is another step towards our goal of accelerating their growth. This is the first time such a product has been launched in the Indian market to help businesses understand where they stand at an overall industry level. 

Problem Statement: Why Did We Think Of Launching D2C Industry Benchmarks?

We launched Velocity Insights to help businesses in their growth journey by providing insights into their business performance. However, businesses/D2C founders increasingly reached out to us for help understanding their performance in relation to their industry. 

With Velocity Insights, businesses could tell if they had improved; however, they were not able to see if the improvement was significant. Using Velocity Insights, businesses could also tell if their business had declined; but again, they were unable to determine if declining numbers were due to execution issues or overall industry headwinds.

Many D2C founders realized that they were operating in a vacuum and expressed a need to know the benchmarks to put their performance in context. They said that industry benchmarks would help them understand how well they were doing or what goals they should set. That’s when we thought of delivering D2C Industry Benchmarks. 

The Challenge With The Existing D2C Industry Benchmarks Solutions 

In order to create D2C Industry Benchmarks, our product team first researched similar existing products in the marketplace. Here is what our team found about the existing benchmarking products:

• Usually US-based (not Indian business specific). Therefore, not useful for Indian D2C businesses 
• Usually estimates and not based on real data  
• Expensive i.e. cost more than $100K
• Only available half-yearly or yearly. Since they are not real-time, they are not actionable for the businesses 
• Not specific enough: They talk about the entire eCommerce industry and not at a segment level

When we could not find any existing solution to our problem of having industry benchmarks for Indian businesses, we took the arduous journey to build it ourselves over a course of 6 months. Multiple data scientists and industry experts worked to come up with D2C Industry Benchmarks. 

Our Solution – D2C Industry Benchmarks – And How It Benefits Businesses 

Based on months of research and customer insights, we created D2C Industry Benchmarks that will help D2C businesses clearly understand the reason for the changes in their key metrics in real-time so that they can succeed in their industry. With a complete view of their performance and the industry as a whole, they can make informed business decisions.

At a high level, we can say that it helps put a company’s performance in context and solves all the 5 pointers mentioned above. The D2C benchmarks are relevant, reliable, and actionable as they are offered in real-time. Here’s a sample report of D2C Benchmarks (not actual values):

In the above Benchmark report, we can see the individual metrics for a business in the apparel and footwear industry. Let’s take an example to understand the benchmarks and their use case better: 

We see that the business’s Cash-on-Delivery (COD) percentage is 43% and 26% on their website and Amazon marketplace respectively. Now, the metrics are high as compared to the top 25% of businesses in the industry but low as compared to the top 50%. This means that the business is somewhere between the top 25-50% of businesses in the industry. And it should take steps to reduce its COD by enticing the customers to use online payment methods, etc so that it comes in the top 25% of businesses in the industry. 

Further, let’s say Facebook’s attribution deteriorates due to algorithm changes or iOS updates, using benchmarks a business can identify if their marketing team has messed up or if there are macro factors at play. Furthermore, if a business’s Cost Per Order (CPO) is rising, then the founder can know if it is because of seasonality or because of internal execution/strategy?  Therefore, they can make plans for improving their own performance, and monitor and evaluate their results in real-time! 

What Did Businesses Discover With D2C Industry Benchmarks? 

If you wish to excel in your field, benchmarking is of the utmost importance, but you must have the correct data to begin. The feedback we have received from the initial users of our D2C Benchmark reports has been astounding; they claim that the Benchmarks have assisted them in the following ways: 

• Make data-backed decisions on their strategies related to ACOS (Advertising Cost Of Sale), sales, etc. 
• Set targets based on the benchmarks metrics
• Assess their business performance against sector benchmarks

We hope to bring the same benefits to all businesses associated with us. Do you want to benefit from D2C Benchmarks too? Get started by clicking here. 

Providing Benchmarks is the next step in our journey to help e-commerce and D2C business grow. We have more updates coming up. Stay tuned!

Easily Track All Metrics with Velocity Insights

We understand how frustrating it can be to track each and every number the company achieves, especially when you do not have a robust tool in place. So, we launched Velocity Insights – a one-stop solution to track all your metrics from various online platforms. Connect your online selling platforms with Velocity Insights in just a few minutes and get a daily business snapshot delivered to your WhatsApp every morning.

Velocity also offers innovative financial solutions to help your business thrive. With our Revenue-based financing options, you can access funding that aligns with your business’s revenue generation, providing a flexible and sustainable way to fuel your growth. To learn more about revenue-based finance and to discover how RBF can benefit your company, click on this link.