Smytten is looking to change the way in which India discovers products. Founded by Siddhartha Nangia, a former Unilever executive, and Swagata Sarangi, previously with Google, Smytten is at direct-to-consumer product discovery and trial platform. It offers an way for consumers to explore and sample products across categories like fragrances, beauty, male grooming, food and beverages, baby and mother care, health, and wellness.
With over 1500 brand partners, Smytten looks to heli consumers make informed purchase decisions. By offering product samples, it allows people to try before they buy, in order to build trust and confidence in their choices. Smytten’s platform leverages AI and data analytics to deliver personalised consumer experiences, driving high engagement and conversion rates. It provides brands with actionable insights to refine their product offerings and marketing strategies. Smytten’s approach allows brands to access rich consumer data, facilitating targetted and efficient customer acquisition. Additionally, the company focusses on sustainable growth, aiming to build a scalable and profitable business model. The platform also emphasises the importance of trust and credibility in the D2C space, helping brands establish strong
consumer relationships.
Smytten’s journey it added doesn’t stop at online discovery. It currently operates stores in Indore,
Surat, Noida, and Ahmedabad, with plans to open 50 to 100 new stores over the next 12 to 18 months. These stores have already seen impressive year-on-year growth of 70 to 100%, highlighting the brand’s rapid expansion and popularity. The next phase of growth will focus on Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities across Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, West Bengal, and Kerala, especially in the central and eastern regions of India.
The retail side of Smytten is expected to contribute significantly to its overall revenue growth, aiming for 20-25% in the coming years. The company is keen on establishing its own stores and is also exploring ‘store-in-store’ collaborations with large retail chains. Smytten has been profitable at the unit economics level for the past 18 months and is on the brink of achieving company-wide profitability by the end of this fiscal year.
In 2022, the company raised Rs. 100 crore in a pre-Series B funding round led by Fireside Ventures and Roots Ventures. Smytten crossed the ₹100 crore revenue mark two years ago and has been growing steadily at a 30 to 40% year-on-year rate. Looking ahead, the company plans to raise Series Bl to fuel its expansion
Smytten Pulse is Smytten’s AI-powered platform that offers brands powerful insights to better understand their consumers and refine marketing strategies. Drawing from over 100 million product trials and data from 20 million shoppers, Smytten Pulse helps brands stay ahead in dynamic markets. It uses advanced AI technologies such as Large Language Models (LLMs), GANs, and AI-powered sentiment analysis to deliver real-time insights. These technologies help brands create personalised campaigns, adjust strategies based on consumer feedback, and optimise product testing to better connect with their target audiences.
The platform the company added has worked with over 100 brands across more than 250 lifestyle categories, providing tools for brands to test products, analyse competition, and fine-tune communication strategies. Smytten Pulse plans to expand into industries like EVs, Real Estate, Paints, and Pharmaceuticals, using AI to support rapid consumer research and help brands craft hyper-targeted, agile campaigns.
Smytten Pulse has three key segments: Pulse Scan for analytics, Pulse Boost as the advertising engine, and Pulse Check, which handles research. Pulse Check includes a simplified brand tracker, designed to address the challenges many new consumer brands face with traditional research methods. This tool allows brands to set up their tracking with just three clicks, offering a DIY solution to measure brand metrics. With an interactive dashboard, it provides real-time analysis and AI-driven insights on key metrics, helping brands adjust their strategies efficiently and improve performance.
Brand Track provides marketers with insights into their brand’s health and effectiveness by reporting in a straightforward format via an interactive dashboard, allowing for real-time tracking and data comparisons. The tool is designed to achieve cost efficiencies of 2-3 times compared to traditional brand tracking tools, giving marketers the power to choose audience cohorts based on demographic and psychographic targeting. Additionally, the cross-tabulation feature enables instant comparisons of data across various segments, facilitating agile responses to market dynamics.
Smytten Pulse blends AI innovations like Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), Vector Stores, and Neural Search. This integration allows brands to sift through unstructured data, such as social media feedback or customer reviews, and retrieve relevant insights. The platform’s AI-powered sentiment analysis also allows brands to adjust their messaging in real-time, ensuring they resonate with their audiences. For example, if a campaign receives negative feedback, brands can modify their approach almost instantly, offering tailored solutions to re-engage consumers.
Smytten Pulse’s growth the company explains is fuelled by its commitment to innovation, with a goal of achieving 400% growth in the near future. By continuously pushing the boundaries of AI, it looks to empower brands to better understand and engage with their consumers in real-time, enabling them to stay competitive and build lasting relationships with their audience.
Medianews4u.com caught up with Swagat Sarangi, Co-founder, Smytten.
Q. What impact has Smytten had on the habits of shoppers since launching in 2015?
Since its inception, Smytten has transformed how Indian shoppers approach product discovery and decision-making. By offering pre-purchase product trials, it has addressed the trust deficit in the market where over 40% of users are skeptical about online reviews. This unique ‘try before you buy’ model has empowered consumers to explore premium products without committing to full-size purchases, significantly influencing their purchasing habits. Today, over 20 million users trust Smytten as their gateway to discovering quality products in a personalised and informed manner.
Q. How has 2024 been for Smytten in terms of market share, revenues, etc?
Having crossed the Rs. 100 crore revenue milestone two years ago, Smytten has continued to thrive at a 30-40% year-on-year rate. This strong growth trajectory will persist for the next two to three years. We are already highly profitable at a unit economics level and are poised to generate profits at a company level starting from the upcoming financial year while maintaining this growth rate.
Q. What trends are being seen on the platform during the festive season in the product trial market?
The festive season has seen a spike in trials for categories like personal care, skincare, and fragrances, reflecting demand for gifting options and self-care during celebrations.
Q. What growth has there been in the number of brands on Smytten’s platform in the past three years?
The number of brands on Smytten’s platform has grown to over 1300 in FY 2024, marking a significant expansion. This growth reflects the trust and value that both legacy and emerging D2C brands place in Smytten’s ability to drive consumer engagement through its unique sampling ecosystem.
Q. How does Smytten Pulse help reduce the customer acquisition cost for companies?
Smytten Pulse helps companies reduce customer acquisition costs by providing accurate and actionable consumer insights through its AI-powered research platform. By leveraging consumer engagement data collected during product trials and post-usage feedback, Smytten Pulse offers brands a reliable and efficient way to understand consumer preferences, behaviors, and motivations. The integration of AI ensures that the research process is faster, error-free, and precise, eliminating biases and inaccuracies commonly associated with traditional methods.
This accuracy guarantees that insights come from genuine consumer interactions, enabling brands to make informed decisions about product development, marketing campaigns, and market-entry strategies. The platform supports a range of research activities, including concept testing, usage and attitude studies, enabled by audience segmentation, ensuring that every initiative aligns with consumer expectations. By minimizing the risk of failed products or campaigns, Smytten Pulse empowers brands to optimise their resources, enhance customer targeting, and significantly reduce acquisition costs while achieving better outcomes.
Q. Is consumers’ trust in brand quality an issue?
Consumer trust in brand quality remains a pivotal challenge, especially in markets where skepticism toward new or lesser-known products is prevalent. This lack of trust often prolongs adoption cycles, as consumers are hesitant to commit to brands they aren’t familiar with.
Today’s consumers are more informed. They critically analyze brand claims, demanding consistency in quality, values, and service. Discrepancies, such as unverified promises or poor customer experiences, can quickly erode trust, especially as consumers grow adept at spotting paid reviews or exaggerated marketing.
Transparency and authenticity have become essential for building trust. Brands that consistently deliver quality and align with consumer expectations can win loyalty and thrive in today’s competitive, highly scrutinized marketplace.
Q. Could you offer recent examples of how Smytten has helped in growing the business of D2C brands?
Smytten has empowered numerous reputed brands to scale by offering targetted sampling and delivering actionable consumer insights that sharpen their product strategies. For example, a modern D2C brand successfully launched its exclusive range of oils by targeting HNI women through Smytten’s platform. By gathering audience feedback, they were able to refine their offerings and optimise product performance with precision.
Q. Could you shed light on the company’s business model? Does it work on a commission?
Smytten operates on a unique business model that combines elements of direct consumer payment and strategic brand partnerships rather than traditional commission structures. Key aspects include:
I) Consumer Payment for Trials where users pay a nominal fee to access product trials, ensuring a high level of engagement and intentionality. This fee partially subsidizes the cost of sample distribution, making the process more efficient and reducing costs for brands.
II) Brand Partnerships: Smytten partners with brands to offer targeted sampling and data-driven consumer insights. It charges brands for access to its platform and data analytics services rather than earning a commission from sales directly.
III) Post-Sampling Purchase: While Smytten facilitates product trials and allows consumers to purchase full-size products post-trial, the primary revenue driver comes from enabling these trials and associated data analytics rather than a direct cut of the product sales.
Q. How does Smytten Pulse use AI and ML to help FMCG companies boost customer engagement?
Smytten Pulse utilises advanced AI and machine learning technologies to revolutionise consumer research and insights for FMCG companies. The platform provides real-time, actionable insights by employing natural language processing (NLP) to analyse consumer feedback, capturing sentiment and emerging trends. Its machine learning algorithms continuously process vast datasets from actual product trials and consumer interactions, enabling brands to generate detailed reports that inform strategic decisions.
Additionally, Smytten Pulse offers tools for conducting agile market research, including customisable surveys and usage and attitude studies, which can be executed in as little as 72 hours. This capability allows brands to swiftly adapt their marketing strategies based on current consumer behaviors and preferences.
Q. How is Smytten Pulse transforming the way in which brands approach consumer research and data analytics?
Smytten Pulse is here to transform consumer research and data analytics by leveraging AI and advanced technology to provide accurate, real-time consumer insights. By integrating engagement data from product trials with robust analytics, the platform delivers validated consumer intent data, offering brands a smarter foresight into market needs.
Unlike traditional research methods, Smytten Pulse simplifies the process by automating data collection and analysis, ensuring precision and eliminating manual errors. The AI-driven insights allow brands to make faster, more informed decisions, optimising their marketing and product strategies.
This tech-enabled approach ensures that brands base their campaigns and product innovations on genuine consumer feedback, minimising the risk of misaligned launches. By aligning advanced analytics with actionable intelligence, Smytten Pulse empowers brands to understand their audiences better, predict trends with accuracy, and create strategies that resonate with evolving consumer demands.
Q. What are the offline touchpoint plans of Smytten? Are online and offline equally important?
Smytten is expanding its offline presence with trial centers in cities like Indore, Surat, Noida, and Ahmedabad, aiming to add 50-100 new locations soon. These centers provide a tangible experience for consumers, especially in tier-two cities, building trust and confidence for new or hesitant digital shoppers. The offline stores complement Smytten’s online platform, creating a seamless trial-to-purchase journey.
While the online platform offers scalability and precision targeting, offline touchpoints enhance brand credibility through tactile experiences. This integrated approach ensures Smytten caters to diverse consumer needs, bridging the digital gap and delivering a comprehensive, trust-driven shopping experience boosting our mission to make everyone #TryItAll.
