D2C marketing is how a direct-to-consumer (D2C) brand finds buyers and sells to them itself. It sells mainly through its own website or app, with no distributor or retailer in between. In India it usually means running several channels at once. They are paid social ads, marketplaces, search, creators, WhatsApp and email, and quick commerce, the apps that deliver within minutes.
The market is large. Bain & Company's report How India Shops Online 2025 was written in collaboration with Flipkart. It puts India's e-retail market at about $60 billion in 2024, measured as gross merchandise value, the total value of goods sold. It counts over 270 million people shopping online in India that year (Bain & Company, published 26 March 2025, checked 7 Oct 2026).
This guide describes each channel neutrally and says when it works. It adds the one most guides skip: being recommended when a shopper asks an AI assistant, such as ChatGPT or Gemini, what to buy. It is part of our guide to AI in ecommerce.
What is D2C marketing?
D2C marketing is the marketing a brand does when it sells its own products straight to the people who use them. The brand runs the store, sets the price, owns the customer list and pays to find each buyer. In return it gets first-hand data on every order, and a direct line to the buyer after the sale.
The difference between B2C and D2C is who sells. B2C, business-to-consumer, covers any company selling to the public, including through shops and marketplaces. D2C is the narrower case where the maker sells directly. D2C ecommerce is that model run through an online store.
In India the label is used loosely. A brand called D2C may also sell on marketplaces and quick commerce apps. For marketing, the useful question is which channels you control and which you rent.
Which channels do Indian D2C brands use?
An Indian D2C brand has seven channels to choose from. Six are well known, and the seventh, AI answers, has its own section below. The table gives one sentence on when each works.
No channel works for every brand. A channel works when the product, the price and the stage of the business fit it.
| Channel | What it is | When it works |
|---|---|---|
| Paid social | Paid ads in social feeds and video apps | When the product can be shown in a few seconds and your margin can pay for each new buyer |
| Marketplaces | Listings on large shopping sites such as Amazon and Flipkart | When shoppers already search for your category there and your price can carry the fees |
| Search | Unpaid search results, the work called SEO or search engine optimisation, and paid search ads | When people already search for the product type or the problem it solves |
| Creators | Influencers and customers who show the product in their own posts and videos | When buyers need to see the product used by someone they trust |
| WhatsApp and email | Messages to people who agreed to hear from you | When you have past buyers and a reason for them to order again |
| Quick commerce | Apps that deliver from local stock within minutes | When the product is low-priced, bought often or needed the same day, in the cities these apps serve |
| AI answers | Being named when a shopper asks an AI assistant what to buy | When the pages AI reads, yours and other people's, describe your product clearly |
What should you know about each channel before you spend?
Each channel has a cost or a rule that changes the maths. These five are worth knowing before you set a budget, and each links to its source.
- Marketplace fees. Amazon's India seller page lists referral fees that vary by product category, closing fees based on the item's price, weight handling fees for delivery, and other fees (Amazon seller fees, checked 8 Oct 2026). Its own formula for profit is the selling price minus those fees and your product cost. Flipkart has its own site for sellers (Flipkart seller site, checked 7 Oct 2026). Read each marketplace's own fee page before you set a price.
- Search. Google says it does not accept payment to crawl a site more often or rank it higher (Google Search Central: how Search works, checked 8 Oct 2026). Taking part in Google Merchant Center, its tool for sellers, is mandatory for some Google surfaces, such as the Shopping tab (Google Search Central: product data, checked 7 Oct 2026).
- WhatsApp messages. WhatsApp's business policy lets you contact only people who gave you their number or username and opted in. On the WhatsApp Business Platform, which businesses use through software instead of the phone app, a conversation you start must use a message template that WhatsApp has approved (WhatsApp business policy, last updated 23 Sep 2026, checked 7 Oct 2026). Since 1 July 2025 Meta has charged per delivered message, at rates that depend on the message category and the recipient's country code. From 1 October 2026 it also charges for replies that do not use a template, after the first 1,000 a month for each business phone number (Meta pricing docs, updated 30 Sep 2026, checked 8 Oct 2026).
- Creator disclosure. The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) says a disclosure is needed whenever there is a material connection between the advertiser and the influencer. That includes free products and discounts, not only payment. ASCI says the responsibility lies with both the advertiser and the influencer, and its permitted labels include Ad, Sponsored, Collaboration and Partnership (ASCI guidelines, checked 7 Oct 2026).
- Quick commerce share. Bain's report says that in 2024 quick commerce platforms took over two-thirds of e-grocery orders and a tenth of e-retail spending in India. It projects growth of over 40% a year through 2030 (Bain & Company, published 26 March 2025, checked 7 Oct 2026).
What is the channel most D2C guides skip?
It is being recommended in AI answers. Shoppers ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Google a full buying question, and the reply names a few brands and products. OpenAI says product results are chosen independently by ChatGPT and are not ads (OpenAI help centre, checked 7 Oct 2026). OpenAI says shopping in ChatGPT is live for users in the US today and will expand to more regions (OpenAI's merchants page, checked 7 Oct 2026).
Ads are separate from product results. OpenAI says ChatGPT Ads have launched in India (OpenAI announcement, published 23 September 2026, checked 7 Oct 2026). Its help page says ads may appear below an answer for users on the Free and Go plans, labelled as sponsored (OpenAI help centre, checked 8 Oct 2026).
The reply is built from your own site and from other people's pages. Depra AI's study counted 4,640 citations in 480 AI shopping answers collected in India on 14 August 2026. The most cited sites were youtube.com with 534, reddit.com with 191, nykaa.com with 176 and magicpin.in with 133.
So the work overlaps with what you already do for search, creators and marketplaces: clear product pages, honest reviews, videos and listings. The new part is checking whether it adds up to a mention. Unlike an ad, a mention cannot be switched on, and it changes from one run to the next.
We found no solid public count of how many shoppers in India ask an AI before they buy. Treat this as a channel to measure, not a number to forecast. ChatGPT shopping explains how products appear, and agentic commerce covers assistants that help with the purchase itself.
How do you get a D2C brand recommended in AI answers?
Make your product easy for AI to read, get it described on the sites AI cites, and measure the result on a schedule. The six steps below reuse work you already do for other channels.
- 1. List your buying questions. Write 10 to 20 questions a shopper would ask, without your brand name, such as "best protein powder for beginners under ₹2,000".
- 2. Ask and record. Put each question to ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google, in a private browser window so your own history stays out of the answer. Note the brands named and the websites cited.
- 3. Let AI crawlers read your store. A crawler is a bot that reads web pages. OpenAI says sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot, its search crawler, are not shown in ChatGPT search answers (OpenAI crawler docs, checked 7 Oct 2026). To check, open yourstore.com/robots.txt in a browser. It is the file that tells bots what they may read. If it has a User-agent: OAI-SearchBot line, the rules under it apply. If not, the rules under User-agent: * apply. A Disallow: / line there blocks the whole site. Our AI crawlers list names the other bots.
- 4. Put product facts in text. Price, size, ingredients and who the product suits should be readable on the page. See ecommerce SEO, or Shopify SEO for Shopify stores.
- 5. Get described on the cited sites. Reviews, videos, forum threads and marketplace listings are where answers look. If a cited page names rivals and skips you, add it to your outreach list. Ask its editor or creator to try the product, and on a marketplace create or complete your own listing. Why ChatGPT doesn't mention your brand has a test for each cause.
- 6. Measure every month. Ask the same questions again and compare. Answers change between runs, so judge the share of answers that name you, not one reply.
Where Depra AI fits
Depra AI does the asking and counting. It puts your buying questions to ChatGPT with web search, Gemini and Google AI Overviews daily, and to Perplexity weekly, from inside India. Questions can be in English or Hinglish, which is Hindi and English typed in English letters. It shows how often each engine names you and your competitors, and which websites the answers cite. For ChatGPT, product visibility shows which brands' products appear in shopping answers.
OpenAI says shopping in ChatGPT is live for users in the US today and will expand to more regions (OpenAI's merchants page, checked 7 Oct 2026). If you track questions for India, your Shopping report may show few or no products until ChatGPT shows products there. Depra AI records products whenever ChatGPT shows them in a tracked answer.
Its AI crawler checker shows which AI bots your robots.txt lets in. Depra AI is software, not an agency. It does not write content or change your store. It does not track marketplace sales, marketplace ads or rankings inside a marketplace's own search. Plans start at ₹1,999 a month plus GST. If your store is on Shopify, see Depra AI for Shopify. To compare trackers, read best AI visibility tools for D2C brands.
How do you pick D2C marketing channels at each stage?
Pick by what you need to learn at your stage, not by what is popular. Early on you need proof that people want the product. Later you need a second and third channel, so D2C growth does not depend on one platform's prices or rules.
That is a D2C marketing strategy in its simplest form: one question per stage, and only the channels that answer it.
Test each new channel with a small fixed budget and a fixed period. Decide beforehand what result would make you continue. Add one channel at a time, or you will not know which one worked.
| Stage | What you need to learn | Channels to lean on | What to delay |
|---|---|---|---|
| Launch | Whether people want the product at this price | One paid social test, one marketplace listing, WhatsApp for feedback | Quick commerce and large creator deals |
| Finding a repeatable channel | Which channel brings buyers at a cost your margin covers | Paid social, small creators, search basics and a first check of AI answers | Any channel you cannot work on every week |
| Scaling | How to grow without the cost per buyer rising faster than revenue | Marketplaces in full, search, WhatsApp and email for repeat orders, quick commerce if the product fits | Deep discounts that teach buyers to wait |
| Steady | How to depend less on paid media | Search, AI answers, repeat buyers and long-term creator partners | New channels without a small test first |
What should a D2C brand measure?
Measure profit per order and where each buyer came from, not only sales. Six numbers cover most decisions, and a seventh covers AI answers. Review them by channel every month.
Channels overlap. A shopper may watch a creator's video, search your name and then buy on a marketplace. Each platform's dashboard can claim that sale, so check the totals against your real orders.
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC): marketing spend divided by the number of new customers it brought.
- Return on ad spend (ROAS): revenue from ads divided by the money spent on them.
- Contribution margin per order: what is left after product cost, shipping, payment fees, returns and marketing.
- Repeat rate: the share of customers who order again within a set period.
- RTO rate: the share of orders that come back undelivered. RTO means return to origin. Watch it separately for cash-on-delivery orders.
- Blended marketing cost: all marketing spend divided by all revenue, which shows the whole picture when channels overlap.
- AI visibility: the share of AI answers to your buying questions that name your brand. How to measure AI visibility explains the maths, and AI share of voice compares you with rivals.