Breakdowns

Six ideas, one picture each.

These are the things I explain to founders again and again, in my reels and across the table. Same words, same examples. Read one, or read all six.

01Repeat customers

Are you a stall at a mela, or a kirana shop?

Imagine you set up a stall at a mela. You scream on top of your voice: buy two, get one free. Everyone comes. You sell, you have fun, you make money. Next weekend, a new mela, the same offers, again. Until you're tired and burnt out.

Now the kirana shop. Rent, stock, sampling, margin given away. Visibly losing money. But after a few weeks, Sharma auntie comes back and buys the 10 kg bag. Then Arora uncle. Day after day, week after week, without an offer.

“The first time, I'm not making money. But I know they'll come back to me.”From my reel on the mela and the kirana shop

What I look at

Repeat purchases and lifetime value, next to what you pay to get each customer. If every sale is a new customer you paid for, you're running a stall.

One idea. A stall sells loudly and starts from zero every weekend. A shop gets its customers back.

02Channel mix

Your marketing is an Indian wedding.

Think of any family wedding you've been to, right? One family member is assigned to welcome you. Namaste, thank you for coming. Another takes you around: the food, the drinks. Another makes sure the important ones were called. Each one has a role.

Now extrapolate that to your marketing. Don't look at Meta, or Google, or influencers and think one of them will take off and you're taken care of. Don't expect Meta to do what Google does, or Google to do what your WhatsApp retention tool does.

“You need to fire all engines in order to scale.”From my reel on the Indian wedding

What I look at

Revenue model and channel mix: which channel brings people in, which one looks after them, and which one brings them back.

One idea. Every platform has one job. Don't ask one to do them all.

Parcels wrapped in kraft paper and twine

03Margins

Topline is what you sell. Profit is what's left.

Just because you bought something cheap and sell it at a higher price, the difference is not your profit. Let me explain.

Price minus product cost is your first margin. Then marketplaces take their commission, and there's courier, warehouse and packaging. Then you spend on Meta and Google to bring people in. Deduct that, and see what's left. That is your real profit. Most founders are surprised.

“Stop chasing your top line revenue. Start tracking your CM3 to know if you're profitable.”From my reel on contribution margins

What I look at

Profit per order, and profit by product and channel. Your product is your only moat. Once that's right, you can tune the marketing.

One idea. Read your business from the bottom bar, not the top one.

04Packaging and shipping

An inch more on the box puts you in the next slab.

When you select your packaging at the beginning, you focus on how beautiful it is, how the unboxing will feel. You don't realise what that same format costs when you scale. It becomes expensive, or messy.

So when you plan packaging and logistics, be mindful. The minute you want a hard box for a great experience, it gets bulkier, and you pay more for every order you ship.

“Even an inch more can put you into the next slab of pricing.”From my reel on packaging

What I look at

Unit economics, order by order: product, box, shipping. Beautiful is fine. Beautiful and unaffordable at scale is not.

One idea. You pay for the box's size on every order, not once.

A knit cardigan folded in tissue inside a kraft box

05Website conversion

Call your abandoned carts.

I asked one founder to call the people who left their carts. In years, they had never called. They had retargeted through WhatsApp, Meta and Google. Nothing wrong with that.

But these are people who saw your ads and entered your system. On a call, you get to understand why the customer stopped, just at that last moment, just before paying. If you want that share of their wallet, you need to know why they stopped.

“Hands down, one of the biggest growth levers that a D2C brand can have.”From my reel on abandoned carts

What I look at

Website conversion: where people drop off, and what they say when you ask them. Before you pay for more traffic.

One idea. They came this far on their own. Ask before you pay to find new people.

Hands packing a tissue-wrapped item into a box

06Team systems

You at every shoot is not a strategy.

Founders think they have all the time in the world. We'll be at the shoot, we'll decide the script, we'll decide all of this. But you are the most expensive resource in your business. And no founder I've met has the bandwidth, the skill and the expertise to do every job.

I learnt this myself. When I sold Bombay Toy Company in 2024, the buyer didn't only look at revenue. They looked at whether it could run without me.

“Systems that didn't rely on me. A team that could run without the founder at the centre.”What made my own brand sellable

What I look at

Team systems and SOPs: who owns what, and what still waits for the founder. One set of priorities for everyone.

One idea. A business is worth what it does without you at the centre.

“No lies, no mincing words. What shows up on camera is what shows up otherwise.”

How I work with founders

If one of these sounded like you

Usually it's more than one. That's the point.

These problems sit where money, customers and marketing overlap. I work inside the business to find which one is really costing you, and fix the highest-impact things first.

Talk to me on Topmate Who is teaching this

Kavea in front of her bookshelf — Kavea D Guptaa, Mumbai