Unveiling The D2C & Retail Summit 2025 Agenda: What’s Driving The Future Of New Commerce In India

How do you picture retail? 

Ride back a few decades, you would think of the humble mom-and-pop store in the neighbourhood, or the local market, at the most. Reset the time machine to two decades, you would reach a snazzy shopping mall. 

Return to the present day, you would hit Instagram or an ecommerce or quick commerce app. Retail is now defined by the D2C brand you often spot on your smartphone. 

What runs beneath this steady change down the decades? 

In one word, it’s accessibility, to be precise. As the internet went deeper and wider across the country, it fundamentally recalibrated how the 1.4 Bn-strong consumer economy discovers, decides, and buys products. 

The D2C (direct-to-consumer) ventures are no longer just creating a space, they are dominating their respective industries with distinctive brand identities, sharp value propositions, and agile distribution frameworks. 

Rooted firmly on this emerging landscape, Inc42 predicted the D2C wave long before it actually hit the shore, and stayed at the forefront to pave the way for the boom. Through extensive industry coverage with news and in-depth features, through flagship events like FAST42 rankings and D2C Retreat, and through the five editions of The D2C Summit, Inc42 has consistently kept the spotlight on breakout brands and supported the builders behind them.

From hands-on learning sessions for early-stage founders to curated, closed-door retreats for growth-stage leaders, Inc42 has helped them rewrite the blueprint for the rise of Indian retail. 

With just a week to go, the sixth edition of The D2C & Retail Summit 2025 is set to take place on July 25 at The Oberoi, Gurugram. The event will bring together over 300 carefully selected industry leaders, investors, and ecosystem stakeholders to discuss and shape the next phase of India’s new commerce landscape, as rising disposable incomes drive the country’s $2.4 Tn consumer market towards an estimated $4.3 Tn by 2030.

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The Age Of New Commerce And The Way Ahead

As per Inc42 estimates, the D2C market is set to surpass $300 Bn by the end of this decade and capture nearly 75% of the nation’s $400 Bn ecommerce potential. This slice of the retail pie will only get bigger by the day.

But the online bandwidth seemed not enough to address the robust demand from youths, who seemed to have far exceeded 371.4 Mn in count by 2021. 

So, the brands have gone omnichannel to complement their online businesses with offline entities. 

The move by digital-first brands like Plum, Snitch, and Mamaearth to go omnichannel even prompted legacy brands such as Tata, Reliance and Marico to borrow from the D2C playbook to break into a largely young consumer market with the average age of 28 years. 

Startups flocking to the primary market, mega funding rounds, and a rise of unicorns define the world’s third-largest startup ecosystem today. Be it Mamaearth’s mainboard BSE and NSE debut, or Menhood’s NSE listing or the Minimalist’s INR 2,955 Cr acquisition by HUL – one observation comes to the fore – India’s retail market is going through a drastic change, led by modern consumer brands. 

GTM strategies, influencer-led marketing and hyper-personalised services are influencing the decision-making of a tech-first audience and creating opportunities that never existed for traditional players when they were building their operations and supply chains. 

Amid this dynamic landscape, Inc42’s The D2C & Retail Summit 2025 marks the next chapter in our commitment to India’s consumer brand ecosystem. The summit will bring together the industry’s best under one roof through a highly curated, invite-only gathering for discourse on the future of India’s D2C and retail.

The summit, the largest of its kind, is presented by Google and supported by the likes of Google Ads, Shadowfax, Nitro, Simpl, Peak XV, Rukam Capital and TMRW. 

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Strategic Discourse That Will Shape D2C Growth

With an unmatched speaker lineup, The D2C & Retail Summit 2025 promises curated sessions to drive the industry dialogues and insights that attendees can leverage for long-term D2C growth. 

Let’s take a glimpse at the probable topics of discussion.

How Top D2C & Retail Brands Cracked Distribution: For many D2C brands, even those with strong brand recall, distribution remains a major challenge, especially in this age of omnichannel business. Some of India’s most successful execution-first leaders will share how they built their distribution channels to scale their brands.

Drools CEO Dr Shashank Sinha will talk about the playbook behind the brand’s pan-India petcare push. In another one-on-one exchange, Atomberg cofounder and COO Sibabrata Das will take the stage to share how he built a multi-channel engine that powered an INR 1,000 Cr revenue run. 

Adding to the mix, Veeba founder and MD Viraj Bahl and Vu Group chairperson and CEO Devita Saraf, who will talk about building consumer-focused brands in the age of new commerce. 

Noise’s cofounder, Gaurav Khatri, will also share his insights on building an INR 2,000 Cr mass wearable brand from India in a fireside chat.

Solving Omnichannel And Modern Retail Puzzle: Retail is no longer about choosing between online and offline, but mastering both, and everything in between. At The D2C & Retail Summit, three insightful panels will bring together retail disruptors, marketplace veterans and legacy brand leaders to tell participants what it takes to win India’s channel-fluid market.

In Rethinking Retail For The Omnichannel Consumer, industry leaders like XYXX Apparels cofounder Siddhartha Gondal, Ferns N Petals global CEO and director Pawan Gadia and Swiss Beauty cofounder and director Mohit Goyal will share how to choose the right offline format, strike the inventory balance and turn offline into a data-driven customer experience engine. 

Another session, Channel Surfing: How To Win On Marketplaces In 2025, will feature voices such as Da Milano director Shivani Malik, Farmley cofounder Abhishek Agarwal on the art of navigating the advertisement clutter, pricing conflicts, and vertical vs horizontal strategies.

The event will also host a panel discussion on Adapt Or Perish, where retail heads like director of Liberty Shoes, Ayush Bansal and Satya Retail CEO Amit Dutta will tell us how to remain relevant for Gen Z and Gen Alpha, making supply chains a moat and avoiding the trap of brand fatigue in a trend-chasing world.

Quick Commerce And Fast Fashion: Leading quick commerce brains are expected to share their views on how preferences of today’s consumers – be it Gen Z or urban elites – are changing and what key trends are driving this growth. 

From packaging to pricing and positioning to mapping high-conversion categories, the panellists will tap into crucial quick commerce pain points and will have a sharp look at the consumer behavioural shifts that matter. 

Hosting the likes of Lahori Zeera cofounder and COO Nikhil Doda, Rohit Chawla, founder and CEO of Innovist, Perfora’s cofounder Jatan Bawa and Boult’s founder and CEO Varun Gupta, Libas founder and CEO Sidhant Keshwani, Clovia founder and CEO Pankaj Vermani and NEWME cofounder and COO Shivam Tripathi, the panels will dive deeper into understanding the real retention levers in a scroll-first world. 

The panelists will focus on the 3Ps of quick commerce dynamics – premiumisation, personalisation and participation – that are no longer optional, rather essential. 

From trends to managing SKUs and assessing quick commerce as a viable fashion channel, the sessions will offer tactical insight into standing out when everyone’s chasing the same trend at the same time, and often, at the same speed.

Decoding The New Indian Consumer: Today’s Indian consumer is a moving target, spanning from value-conscious Bharat to affluent India. At The D2C & Retail Summit 2025, top investors will break down on how they’re tracking these shifting consumption patterns and what truly signals the brand breakout potential.

From rethinking loyalty to spotting demand signals that are often missed by most players, the panel will go deep inside the 3Ps. It will also discuss what clinches a term sheet in today’s funding environment by offering founders a rare peek into consumer insights and conviction points that investors are actually backing.

Join India’s Biggest D2C And Retail Summit

The D2C & Retail Summit 2025 is expected to become a cornerstone event for India’s new commerce landscape, featuring exclusive insights, fostering high-value connections and fuelling unique retail innovations. 

The summit will host key sessions like What It Means To Be An AI-Ready Brand, The Marketing Stack For A New Consumer Reality, Lab-Grown Diamonds And The Next Chapter Of Aspirational Retail, and Hyperlocal-First: The New Logistics Paradigm. 

It’s time for you to be a part of India’s biggest new commerce discourse and learn from new-gen leaders driving what can be called The Great Indian Retail Revolution. Apply for your passes today! 

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