How Bewakoof Used Social Media as a Tool to Build a D2C brand

Bewakoof.com, founded in 2012, is one of India’s largest D2C fashion brands built on social media, with content marketing being a key growth strategy. The brand’s philosophy is to add lightheartedness to life through its self-expressive products and fun shopping experiences. 

Backed by marquee investors like IvyCap and InvestCorp, Bewakoof sells 20,000 units of apparel and accessories a day and has a customer base of over 10 million.

Prabhkiran Singh, the Founder, and CEO of the brand, while pursuing engineering at IIT Bombay was keen to launch a brand with which he can identify, a brand that can become a vehicle of expression for its customers. While studying at IIT, he launched the portal with an initial investment of Rs 30,000. 

Today, Bewakoof has emerged as one of the most formidable names in the online fashion segment. They recently also launched an entire beauty range under a new brand – Cosmos. 

Bewakoof is built for customers between 18-32 years who want to wear their point of view and prefer hatke products. Their expressions can take the form of t-shirts, denim, jackets, mobile covers, or backpacks.

Retail Strategy

Bewakoof is an online-first brand. The entire range of products is available on Bewakoof.com. Recently, the brand has also gone live on top marketplaces like Amazon.in, Flipkart, Myntra, etc. They plan to list their products across other major online marketplaces like Tata Cliq and Nykaa in the next 6 months.

“In the immediate future, we have no plans to go Omnichannel. We have a firm belief that we will be able to grow the current brand sales of Rs 300 crore to Rs 2,000 crore through digital distribution, with the majority coming from the Bewakoof shopping app,” asserts Singh.

Social Media: The Powerhouse of Influencing Consumer

As more online shoppers emerge from Tier II and III cities, the youth fashion brand has enabled the expressions and content in regional languages (Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Telugu, and Gujarati) across the range of the products. 

“We have also kick-started celebrity engagements for promoting the brand. We enjoy a fan base of 6 million across their social media platforms. Our Instagram page is a gold mine of topical memes. Leveraging our deep understanding of customers, content, and celebrity engagements, we recently launched promotional campaigns with Rajkummar Rao and Sanya Malhotra,” he says.

Bewakoof has an organic following of 6.1 million followers - 1.6 million on Instagram and 4.5 million on Facebook. The contemporary quirky content has been instrumental in building this following for the brand.

“We are working with more than 250 influencers on content creation and promotion across the influencers’ handles, Bewakoof’s social media handles, and for the Bewakoof portal,” Singh states.

Betting Big on D2C Strategy

There are multiple reasons why the brand is betting big on the direct-to-consumer (D2C) strategy.

“D2C brands could fulfill niche needs with the help of the internet. These brands could possibly cause disruption in the retail landscape by enabling affordability with the elimination of the middleman. Without retail rentals and offline distribution, D2C brands could be built faster, with capital efficiency and wider distribution.  Apart from the distribution disruption, D2C brands have the potential to disrupt the entire process of brand creation and product designing,” explains Singh.

“We use technology to disrupt the entire process of brand creation and management from design, manufacturing sourcing supply chain, refill, inventory management, warehousing, distribution, demand creation and establishing emotional quotient with the digitally native hyper consuming Indians,” he adds.

Foraying Into New Categories

Bewakoof has recently entered into the fast-growing beauty market in India with the launch of Cosmos Beauty.

Under the Cosmos brand, 43 products ranging from day & night creams to aftershave to bath salts to serums have gone live on Bewakoof and all marketplaces.

“As a brand, Bewakoof has carved its space in the minds and hearts of the millennials with its fashion range of apparel, backpacks, flip-flops, and mobile covers. We understand our customers well, feel the solutions they need for different occasions, are a vehicle for their expressions, speak their language tone and tenor. We get them. Our track record and data show strong demand for differentiated beauty brands that have efficacy, fair price and don’t discriminate, who don’t propagate the idea of fair skin but address the problems for all skin types and concerns that prevent them from enjoying a healthy skin, hair, and body,” he asserts.

“We will be disappointed if we don’t hit Rs 100 crore in 18 months and we are quite confident of hitting Rs 500 crore in 4 years,” he adds.

Future Plans

The brand, which is popular for its offerings in casualwear, has also launched indo-fusion ethnic and sleepwear. Along with a range of collaborations with Marvel, DC Comics, Looney Tunes, Star Wars, F.R.I.E.N.D.S, and Disney, an exclusive Toofan collection has also been launched.

“We will continuously roll out new collections in existing categories and at the same time, widen the categories where we are going to be present soon,” he states.

Bewakoof, which is currently clocking the brand sales at Rs 300 crore, plans to clock revenue of Rs 2,000 crore in the next 4 years.