Direct-to-consumer brands have taken the startup ecosystem by storm. These brands start out by selling from their website directly, assisted by e-commerce marketplaces such as Flipkart and Amazon. They usually start online, are more nimble than offline retailers, have higher margins and can transition offline to an omnichannel model when online growth slows down. They are often in niche areas but able to command loyal customers without deep discounting and hit Rs 100 crore in annual revenues within a couple of years - never seen before for individual brands. From an investor's point of view, D2C brands have good unit economics, inherently do not burn cash and can scale with little capital.