The post-Covid era has brought a positive push to the Indian D2C brands. Brands are leveraging the D2C channel to speed up user feedback and new launch iterations. On one hand, many audio and wearable brands are solving for styles while matching Indian price points. On the other side health/wellness/beauty D2C Brands have started from premium niche opportunities, which were not solved by incumbents. A report published by Axis my India Ltd. in August 2021 confirmed that 92% of Indians prefer buying local, homegrown products
The mass middle class in India has been a tough nut to crack for many brands. Although the internet has now reached even remote parts, customer aspirations to buy lifestyle products have evolved. The cost of distribution and affordability for the Indian masses has been a challenge. Many times brands have sold discounted products to drive acquisitions. While others have offered COD as a means to lure customers. Studies have shown that a whopping 65% of orders placed online are COD. The number is even higher when orders are from Tier 2-3 cities. A study observed that the average COD orders in Tier 1 cities are ~62%, in Tier 2 cities are ~70%, and in tier 3 cities it accounts to ~80%. This gives rise to RTO problems where most brands can incur losses. Many brands have found clever ways to reduce this risk.
Fireboltt, a leading smartwatch brand, combines superior designs and blue-tooth calling at sub-5000 price points. To further meet the affordability needs of GenZ customers, their watches are available in easy EMIs powered by Snapmint. Fireboltt’s founder and CEO Arnav Kishore said, “Fireboltt is a proud Indian brand that makes premium wearables & Audio with cutting-edge technology. Our main aim was to bring Indian citizens premium quality products in affordable ranges. Our integration with Snapmint has successfully furthered our cause by boosting our online sales and 0073lashing our COD orders. We also notice that customer adoption from tier 2-5 cities has increased since the integration with Snapmint. Overall, our partnering with Snapmint has been a fruitful one and brings into perspective the need for Snapmint for our customers”
Snapmint, an Indian Fintech with a unique business model helps push D2C brands to make an affordability appeal to the Bharat audience. EMI payments have become a way to sachetise and make items of every price point affordable. EMI payments are especially popular among Gen Zs and Tier 2-5 city audiences. Traditional EMI providers have ignored these segments for quite a while now. Out of 550 Mn PAN holders in India, only 45 Mn have access to credit. Indian Fintechs have recognised this gap and are thus, helping this segment get access to credit. Snapmint has observed that with EMI payments, RTOs witness a fall of as much as 0.5% for some categories.
According to tier 2-4 purchase behaviour observed by Snapmint, more and more audiences from this segment are willing to swap COD for EMI payments. In fact, out of the 10 Lakh+ orders completed in the past year, a whopping 86.42% of the orders are from tier 2-4 cities. It has been observed that Empowered Action Group States (Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha (Orissa), Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh) contribute to 31.3% of the total orders. It is to be noted that the combined GDP of EAG states is 27%.
“These data points show that the need for EMI payments and an aspiration for a better lifestyle has always existed among these buyers. However, they were traditionally ignored by brands and credit companies as they were not seen as a potential buyer segment. The affordability appeal of EMI payments has given these consumers a positive push. Brands interested in penetrating beyond metros see Snapmint as a means to reduce distribution and servicing costs”, Abhineet Sawa, co-founder of Snapmint told us. One can also see similar buying behaviour in the North-Eastern region. The share of Snapmint EMI orders in north-eastern states is 50% more than their share of India’s GDP. Other Indian D2C brands are leveraging EMI payments as a strategy too. These include big brands like boAt, Portronics, Croma, W, and Traya.
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As more Indians become comfortable using digital payments, the tendency to make EMI payments will increase. Trends show that there has been a 220% increase in EMI transactions since the pandemic
