The Insurgent Brands Playbook

“Founded in 2012, DSG was the first consumer-focused venture capital firm in India and Southeast Asia. We recognized early on that consumer brands require a distinct approach to business building and investing, different from that of tech businesses. Over the last decade, our conviction in this belief has only deepened.

As a firm, we are always seeking ways to refine our mental models and improve decision-making. We have long felt the need for an exhaustive study of the consumer brand landscape and consumer behavior to derive actionable, data-backed insights. These insights can then serve as valuable playbooks for key stakeholders in the ecosystem, including insurgent brand founders, incumbents, and investors. We are thrilled to partner with Bain & Co. on this important project”

Hariharan Premkumar

Managing Director & Head of India

Introduction

Insurgent Brands – A New Breed of Consumer Brands

We define Insurgent Brands as those winning the heart of underserved customers in India and possessing a clear sense of mission and purpose. These brands operate with a sense of insurgency and are on track to capture an outsized share of growth in consumption. They are already growing at a much faster pace than category, on average, 3x category.

Insurgent brands continue to outsize incumbents by growing much faster in last five years

2018

##x

Growth multiples

2013

xx%

Share of Insurgents in respective category

Food and Beverage

Apparel & Lifestyle

Jewellery

Beauty & Personal care

Home & Kitchen

Elec.Wearabes &Devices

Growth of overall market over 2018-2023

~2x

~1.5x

~2.5x

~2x

Growth of overall market over 2018-2023

~6x

0.0%

0.1%

~5x

0.2%

0.6%

~7x

0.1%

0.7%

~7x

0.6%

2.9%

~8x

0.5%

1.5%

~50x*

0.6%

9.4%

Our work with Bain & Company delves into how insurgent brands have garnered disproportionate growth and presents a playbook for profitable and capital-efficient scale for the era of insurgents that lies ahead.

Playbook

Game Changers 2023: The Value Creation Playbook

In collaboration with Bain & Company, we analyse consumer exits in the past 15 years, identify emerging mega trends in the Food & Beverage sector, and launch InsurgeX Index– a celebration of fundamentally sound, successful consumer businesses.

Four key takeaways emerge:

The most common exit route for consumer brands is M&A with strategics, driven by an increase in early-stage acquisitions at lower valuations

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Consumer brands exits take time and are not unicorn outcomes

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Despite exit at lower enterprise valuations, high founder stake drives meaty founder value

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While highest exit activity is seen in F&B, BPC, and Apparel, revenue multiple is determined by the fundamental health of a business.

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InsurgeX

The InsurgeX Index

While brands that scale rapidly make news headlines, the Indian consumer ecosystem often overlooks the importance of fundamentals focused growth.

This is particularly crucial for consumer businesses, which require a different approach compared to their tech counterparts. While tech companies can grow quickly, consumer brands typically take longer to reach similar scale.

However, when consumer brands grow sustainably—by consuming less capital and focusing on fundamentals—the returns can be just as rewarding, if not more stable. A calibrated approach to growth is, therefore, essential; pursuing growth for its own sake, especially by overcapitalization, can be counterproductive.

To recognize and celebrate brands that strike the right balance between growth and strong fundamentals, we have created the InsurgeX Index. This index is based on two core dimensions: revenue growth trajectory and capital efficiency.

Playbook

Game Changers 2022: The Insurgent Brands Playbook

In our inaugural work with Bain & Company, we define insurgent brands and analyze ~200 brands to create a playbook for insurgent brands to grow in a capital-efficient and profitable manner, while highlighting the emerging consumer themes and archetypes that insurgents can tap early to drive disproportionate growth.