India’s economy is one of the fastest-growing in the world, and the country is seeing an increasing number of innovative startups and emerging brands. These brands are creating a significant impact on the Indian market and are expected to continue growing in the current decade. From food delivery and e-commerce to beauty and personal care, these emerging brands are redefining how Indian consumers interact with their products and services. These brands are disrupting the industry with their innovative offerings and have raised substantial funding to support their growth.
From the freshest fruits and veggies delivered right to your door with Sorted to the mouth-watering burgers of Burger Singh that will have you saying, “Mera Desh, Mera Burger,” these brands are shaking things up and bringing something new and exciting to the table. Join Ventures is leading the way in D2C brands for celebrations, while Australian household goods brand Anko is making its mark in India with a selection of trendy and affordable products. And let’s not forget about Recode Studios, the makeup brand with a mission to be your one-stop shop for all things beauty and personal care. With GoKwik simplifying digital payments, these brands are definitely ones to watch in 2023!
Let’s dive into the list and explore what makes these brands stand out from the crowd.
Sorted
Anant Goel, Founder & CEO, Sorted
Sorted is India’s first omnichannel platform for quality fruits and vegetables. Powered by proprietary technology and a franchisee network of hundreds of neighborhood stores, the platform enables access to straight-from-farmers fruits and vegetables to the consumer while improving the lives and livelihoods of store owners. With Sorted, customers can get the freshest F&V through the medium of their choice – call, message, online, or offline – by simply walking in at the nearby Sorted store any time of the day within a few minutes.
Yet another brainchild of Anant Goel, the founder of the daily 7 am delivery service Milkbasket, Sorted runs a tech-heavy, full-stack supply chain specifically created to handle highly complex, perishable, and fragile fruits & vegetables. Sorted has raised over 5 million USD as seed funding in their ongoing round to grow the business.
Join Ventures
Tarun Joshi, Founder & CEO, Join Venture & IGP.com
Join Ventures is India’s leading house of D2C brands for celebrations that has emerged as a go-to destination for everything celebration in India. Led by Founder and CEO Tarun Joshi, Join Ventures owns and operates a portfolio of digital-first brands that offer handmade, personalised, and curated products across the Fresh, Food, Home, and Fashion categories. The Join Ventures house of brands includes IGP – India’s largest D2C brand for celebrations, Interflora – India’s largest D2C brand for premium flowers, IGPforBusiness – India’s leading B2B2C partner for reward management and corporate gifting, and Masqa – a D2C brand for indulgent foods.
In September 2022, Join Ventures raised $23.5 million (Rs 187 crore) in its latest funding round, and it has successfully grown its business by three times in the last 2 years to reach INR 250 crore annualised revenue run-rate. Join Ventures currently services customers in over 100 countries through its extensive same-day delivery network, powered by three mother warehouses and 40-plus dark stores.
Anko
Pulkit Bansal, Country Head, Anko India
Anko is one of Australia’s most loved and trusted retail brands known for its curated range of home and living products designed to be brilliantly simple and make everyday living brighter for customers. Sold in over 300 stores across Australia and New Zealand and broader markets globally since 2017, Anko has developed a strong reputation for delivering outstanding value and on-trend, sustainably sourced products that customers love.
Anko’s product range is designed to fit modern lifestyles and is crafted by an in-house team of Australian designers who work tirelessly to embrace the latest international trends. The Anko product range represents the world we live in. These products are considered number #1 among shoppers in Australia and New Zealand.
Recently Anko entered India via Amazon.in and its D2C store, www.anko.co.in. Anko’s entry into the Indian market is driven by a vision to provide customers with affordable, stylish, and functional products that cater to their needs. The brand recognises the growing consumerism in India and sees a huge opportunity to cater to the aspirational needs of middle and upper-middle-class Indian consumers who are seeking high-quality products to enhance their homes and lifestyles.
Burger Singh
Kabir Jeet Singh, Co-founder & CEO, Burger Singh
Burger Singh is the only Made in India brand to compete with international fast food giants and is India’s fastest-growing and largest homegrown burger chain in the QSR category. The company launched its first outlet in 2014 in the city of Gurugram, and since then, the chain has seen a rapid rollout across India with over 90+ outlets in 14 states and 56 cities that include cities like Delhi NCR, Lucknow, Jaipur, Dehradun, Jammu, Nagpur, Ahmedabad, Jhansi, Chandigarh, Amritsar and others with several other franchises under fit-outs across the country.
Burger Singh standouts in a crowded market by offering burgers with an Indian twist that caters to the Indian palate. Over the years, the company has introduced a range of vegetarian and non-vegetarian burgers with Indian flavours. Burger Singh’s unique approach to fast food and quirky branding has helped the QSR chain carve a unique following among Indian youths
The chain is also known for being the first Indian burger chain to establish an international presence with three outlets and one food truck in London.
Recode Studios
Dheeraj Bansal, Co-founder & Director, Recode Studios
Recode Studios is a Ludhiana-based makeup brand that offers a wide range of high-quality, affordable makeup products for Indian consumers. With a network of 30 stores across India, the brand has quickly established itself as a leader in the Indian beauty industry. Recode Studios is committed to providing exceptional customer service and innovative product offerings to its customers.
Recode aims to become one of the nation’s largest platforms selling multiple beauty and lifestyle brands, becoming a one-stop portal for all types of beauty and personal care products customers can look for. Recode Studios has raised a pre-Series A funding round at a valuation of 100 crores. The brand plans to deploy funds to hire senior vertical leadership to develop its team, scale up R&D and launch new products to expand its product range and scale business.
GoKwik
Chirag Taneja, Co-Founder & CEO, GoKwik
GoKwik is an e-commerce enablement company on a mission to democratise the shopping experience and increase GMV realisation for e-commerce businesses. GoKwik believes in a ‘Merchant-First’ philosophy and uses AI/ML technologies to solve hard-hitting problems like Return to Origin (RTO), and better Cash on Delivery (CoD) conversion rates for e-commerce players, including D2C brands.
GoKwik’s checkout and UPI solutions help improve checkout conversion rates ensuring higher GMV realisation, increased profitability, reduced Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), and increased delivery rates. Gokwik has raised $35 million in its Series B funding round in May 2022.
Increff
Rajul Jain, Co-founder & CEO, Increff
Increff is one of the leading data and technology companies, offering omnichannel inventory optimisation and supply chain management solutions to e-commerce, fashion, and retail brands. Increff offers a host of SaaS-based industry-agnostic merchandising solutions and smart warehousing solutions for inventory optimisation of e-commerce, fashion, and retail brands.
Built for B2B & B2C brands and retailers, this algorithm-driven SaaS-based tool performs billions of computations within minutes of runtime, to deliver quick action-oriented results for optimum inventory planning & distribution for sales maximisation. Considering seasonality, recency & festivity, this tool analyses multiple layers of attributes to calculate store-specific assortments to maximise sales.