Deepak's Musings #122: The need for more consumer focused funds

👫🏼 Consumer founders need investors focused on building consumer brands

I was overjoyed when I read about Humble Growth, Unfold Ventures and Alethia VC, 3 new venture/growth funds focused on partnering with entrepreneurs passionate about building consumer brands. We at DSG Consumer Partners have always said traditional VC funds, who developed their playbook on digital and technology businesses, are not suitable for CPG brands. At the same time, in India and Southeast Asia, the private equity firms that do understand consumer brands, do not invest in early-stage pre-revenue consumer brands. In the US we continue to see more specialised funds focused on the consumer, with Humble and Unfold being the latest two. DSGCP was the first in India and since then we have seen more enter the space given the potential to back the next generation of consumer brands. In Southeast Asia, it is still DSGCP on its own focused only on the consumer brand. I hope we will see more specialised investors entering the market and helping us create an ecosystem to support consumer entrepreneurs.

🥗 SaladStop!’s co-founder Adrien Desbaillets’ keynote at this year’s DT/UX Summit 2023

Adrien talks about SaladStop!’s sustainability journey. Listening to his customers for over 14 years and the emphasis in the SaladStop! story was about the people, about the customers, about observing them, about getting feedback. That makes it both human-centered and humanity-centered. Consumers are demanding more from the businesses they interact with and the time to act is now. Momentum is building. DSG Consumer Partners is proud to have partnered with SaladStop! since 2016.

🍬Case study: Smart Sweets, from start-up to selling a majority stake for more than $300 million

The Smart Sweets story is another fantastic case study of how to build a successful insurgent consumer brand. Start-up to selling a majority stake for more than $300 million.

🏟️ Highlights from the ExpoEast 2023

For many of you, who like me, could not make it to ExpoEast 2023, I am looking out for the best TLDR and overviews from people who attended to give me a sense of what is new, relevant and trending at one of the most important trade shows on the CPG calendar. Here are two from Nate Rosen’s Express Checkout and Fred Hart via Dieline.

🌿🌿 Veeba: The transition from condiments to a holistic consumer company

Viraj Bahl, CEO of VRB Foods, speaks to the Financial Express on the company’s journey towards becoming a broad-based multi-product consumer company.

🧘‍♀️ The Lululemon Global Wellbeing Report 2023

A very good synopsis of the latest Global Wellbeing Report that Lululemon first published in 2021. A snapshot into how consumers view well-being and its impact on their behaviour and therefore spending.

🛒 Unorganised to Organised: The huge opportunity for brands, insurgents and incumbents

Results from Haldiram’s confirm what we believe to be one of the top 10 themes in the consumer category in India and Southeast Asia: the move from unorganised to organised. Consumers will start looking for brands they trust and gives all brands to build a relationship with their consumer.

🤝🏼 Wipro Consumer Care Ventures speaks to Inc42 about corporate venturing and why incumbents are now playing in the venture space

Sumit Keshan leads Wipro Consumer’s CVC initiative and shares his perspective on why incumbents, like Wipro, look to invest in start-ups and VC funds. His colleague Deepak Chandran was at the DSGCP Investor Conference in Singapore on 19 Sep 2023 and touched on many of these topics on his panel. It is a wide-ranging discussion and Shumit covers different models of CVC, why Wipro’s approach to startup investments is more from a financial perspective and why it functions more like a VC.

🤝🏼 Interesting CPG collaboration: Nestlé X Kellogg

I am a huge fan of collabs. When done well, it brings two often adjacent but distinct categories together, allowing 2 (or more) brands to leverage each other’s communities. This one brings milk and cereal together to deliver cereal milk. Not sure how it will play out but absolutely fun and interesting.

🧃Are consumers ready for alternative packaging for alcobev products?

As an investor in Sula Vineyards, Brewlander and Goa Brewing Co, I have always asked myself if consumers will accept more sustainable packaging for their wine and beer. All three brands sell products in glass bottles which we all know are expensive to ship and not ideal for carbon emissions if we have to move them around.

💰Funding snapshot

Selected funding news that caught my attention given the categories they are in.