Decoding Revenue With Nishkarsh Dhar
Nishkarsh Dhar of The Whole Truth shares how the brand doubled down on their QComm strategies using GobbleCube’s insights-first revenue growth platform to tackle data challenges, fix hyperlocal availability, share of voice and attain leadership in the protein powder category.
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“Who knew energy bars sold best in large combo packs?”exclaims Nishkarsh Dhar of The Whole Truth (TWT), as he talks about the serendipitous discovery on Quick Commerce (QComm) platforms.
“It was a misinterpretation at our end that we thought QComm shoppers always prefer these (energy bars) as single-pack SKUs,” adds the Senior Account Manager (Instamart) at TWT.
This revelation was one among many that The Whole Truth team stumbled upon within the first few months of partnering with GobbleCube. TWT, as one of the first movers on QComms, has been able to uncover untapped opportunities and double down on existing revenue streams with GobbleCube, to drive higher revenue and market share.
For TWT, the rapidly growing importance of QComms hit home in April 2023 with the brand doubling down on its revenue growth efforts. The team size doubled as did the numbers of platforms that were being monitored.
But they quickly realized that winning on QComms was not just about being seen or monitoring platforms. It requires decision-making at the most granular-level.
QComm’s 10-minute delivery has given rise to a new set of challenges for brands to resolve at a locality-level, rather than at city-level, revealing billions of data-points that need to be monitored and analyzed to derive insights.
This is where GobbleCube stepped in, to ease TWT’s data woes by serving up real-time actionable solutions. This has enabled the brand to unlock new opportunities in certain categories and achieve leadership in others.
So what has the journey been like so far?
“Very exciting with lots more to come,” emphasizes Nishkarsh who spoke to us at length about his journey, initiatives & strategies that drove TWT to the leadership position, particularly in the protein powder category, and about GobbleCube’s role in the brand’s QComm success story.
Here are the highlights of that conversation -
GobbleCube (GC): What have been some of the biggest challenges for you as a brand on QComms?
Data Capability Challenges
Nishkarsh Dhar (ND): Data capability was one of the biggest challenges for us last year around this time because data capabilities on the platform side have been low. So, just arriving at insights was so difficult because there were no reports being shared with us, say on where our visibility is being deployed. Sales reports were only shared once a month compared to now when we have access to it almost daily.
Another challenge was to understand the deployment of our assets - what was working for the platform and what wasn’t. We were simply relying on our intuition to deploy these assets, given the lack of data and insights.
What GobbleCube helped us with was an improvement on this. Today, we can confidently say that we have an immense amount of grasp over where money is deployed on the platform. We can also see how that is impacting overall category market share and offtake.
Availability tracking with GobbleCube was a big plus for us… enabled us to go back to the platforms with a list of important SKUs…
Retaining Shelf Space
ND: Another challenge that is coming up now is on the assortments front.
Last year one of the biggest sub-categories was packaged foods and so the platforms’ focus was to onboard as many SKUs and brands as possible in that segment. In the later half of this year, however, QComms also started onboarding categories that gave them an even larger average order value (AOV), such as electronic devices and personal care products.
Gross margin in these categories is obviously much better. But because of this transition to newer categories, shelf space availability has taken a huge hit across dark stores and cities, posing a slight threat to our shelf space. Being a QComm-first brand, we wanted to ensure that any loss from this transition is as minimal as possible.
This is where availability tracking with GobbleCube was a big plus for us. We realized that a hit on availability in these categories could falter conversations around growth and strategy because success on QComm comes down to what availability looks like. If your SKUs aren’t available, there is no point in conversations around SKU movement across cities, dark stores, and localities.
Here, the insights we derived from GobbleCube enabled us to go back to the platforms with a list of SKUs that are important not just for us but also for them as categories.
GC: The category that has been a standout for you on Instamart has been the protein powder category. What strategies helped you get there?
Understanding Paid Campaign Attributions
ND: September 2024 was a crucial month for us. We were doing a lot of ads, especially for protein powder - a focus category for us across platforms.
On Swiggy Instamart, we've been very proactive in understanding and helping the platform scale the category. A lot of activation happened during the month.
All of the attribution data and insights that we got in the months before from GobbleCube helped us understand how we came to achieve the No.1 position in the category in September. It also helped us identify key SKUs to prioritize, key localities, the low hanging problem statements to solve for, in terms of availability, listing percentage, etc. Earlier, we would only look at city-levels such as Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore but now we were able to go much, much deeper.
Very little convincing to be done for the shopper, but more for our partners on Instamart.
Eventually, platforms understood…
Attaining Leadership in Protein Powders on Swiggy Instamart
ND: For the protein powder category on QComms, the problem statement was very different. Towards the end of last year, we spent a couple of months convincing platforms and helping them understand why this category and why TWT is the right fit for them to focus on while building this category.
Very early on the adoption rate was great. Moreover, some of the stats that we received from Instamart pointed to the fact that TWT, at least in the breakfast and cereals categories which is bars, peanut butter and protein powder, has some of the highest customer retention on the platform. So, very little convincing to be done for the shopper, but more for our partners on Instamart.
Eventually, platforms understood not only from the math lens of how large the AOV is or how high the margin is in this category, but they also understood that the need for everything to be available in 10 minutes is a big space for them to cater to.
We have recently started doing a lot of partnered activation with the platform, on and off the app. We really wanted to understand category share at an SKU-level, because in the categories that we consider to be of importance, it's very important for us to be at rank one or maintain the category share.
Here, again the data capabilities at GobbleCube’s end have helped us track our category share movement and its attribution to say, availability, listing percentage, etc. These have been very important attributes to look at, something which we did not have access to earlier.
GC: Tracking and maintaining OSA (On Shelf Availability) must be quite challenging. What are some of the ways you have managed to do this successfully?
Tracking and Maintaining OSA using Category Share Insights
ND: One of the main things that we've been trying to align is the OTIF (On Time in Shelf), one of the most important things from the brand’s perspective. It's no longer just about understanding which SKUs are available across cities and localities, but also making sure that from the time that we receive a particular PO (Purchase Order) and till the time it's fulfilled, there is alignment at both ends.
We have been following this at our end but it has been a bit of a challenge.
Now, there is pod-tiering on platforms across cities which means if you're listed in a particular city, it's not necessary that the SKU is going to be available across all codes within the city. A very important conversation to have time and again with the platform is about how these SKUs can be moved to a pod that’s available across all pin codes.
The way we do that is by talking about category share insights that we get from GobbleCube and the sales momentum that the product has seen.The push needed from your end is not going to be acted upon only because of the sales that platforms see at their end. This is where the insights we receive from GobbleCube help us in tracking availability.
We would often forget that QComm essentially is a game of distribution and availability.
GC: In what way would you say GobbleCube has been able to help you with fixing availability concerns?
Bridging the Gap between Availability and Attribution
With GobbleCube coming in, we've understood that what needs the foremost attention is listing and availability. We've also understood how the attribution and correlation factor there is much more stronger than it is on say growth and visibility (on the platform). So, that's definitely one of the factors that we now look at a lot more closely.
A lot of time has been spent in understanding the gap between availability and attribution because this gap is so dynamic. Availability and its attribution is a big thing which brands don't understand in the QComm space because data capabilities on the platforms’ side has been low. Currently, brands rely on the intuition that quick commerce is growing so everything will grow with it, given the flood of investments in this space.
Earlier, when we would look at a month-on-month growth, whether it's at an SKU level or category level, we would always try and attribute it as much as possible to the kind of visibility we would deploy on the platform. We would often forget that QComm essentially is a game of distribution and availability. The reason we were suffering on that front is also because it's such a difficult thing to ask your resources to work on within the team.
With GobbleCube, we now have a better understanding of how complex this problem statement is and what the nuances are in terms of availability or market share movement.
Identifying Opportunities With SKU-level Category Share
Looking at category share at an SKU-level, we intuitively had a fair understanding of what works at a brand level for us vs for competition. But I think now, looking at it at an SKU-level across brands has helped us also understand which pockets within the category need focus and what flavors within the category are growing and gaining eyeballs from shoppers. That’s a nuance that validates a lot of our intuition internally and understanding this nuance at an SKU-level across categories is also an input that we get now from GobbleCube.
GC: Did GobbleCube insights throw up any surprise revelations for you?
Opportunities in Combo-Packs
ND: Within the category of Energy Bars, we did not know for the longest time that across competition the packs that were moving the fastest were the large combo packs. That was a misinterpretation from our end where we always thought that shoppers look at these brands more from a single pack SKUs, which was a big miss from our end. We've already passed this insight on to our category and business development team.
GC: How do you manage to track Share of Voice (SOVs)?
Deploying Visibility for Long-Term Organic SOV
ND: Organic is eventually a product of paid SOVs on the platform. So, it's about what kind of paid campaigns you deploy on the platform. One thing that we've done intelligently is to deploy more efficient and specific campaigns.
For instance, a mid-year fitness store where we tell people to resume their abandoned New Year resolutions in the middle of the year. We do that for a category like protein powder or protein bars, where ‘guilt-free indulgence’ is a big use-case that we push for.
Figuring out more intelligent ways to deploy our visibility so that long-term organic SOV is maintained within these categories is definitely one of the ways we manage visibility on platforms.
Monitoring SKUs at different localities was done manually earlier with somebody having to enter the pin code and look at multiple pin codes in the city. With GobbleCube, now that data is on our fingertips.
GC: What variables do you monitor on the GobbleCube dashboard to maintain your competitive edge?
Monitoring SKUs and their Listing
ND: Availability, listing penetration, assortment depth across categories are things we look at while tracking competition.
For instance, if my SKU count is 10 and competition is at 20, my market share is obviously going to be low. Monitoring SKUs at different localities was done manually earlier with somebody having to enter the pin code and look at multiple pin codes in the city and understand what the SKU count looks like. But now that data is on our fingertips, thanks to GobbleCube. Now we can directly look at GobbleCube and understand where the fight begins first whether at SKU count, or visibility, then at availability, and so on.
While we have been early adopters to the QComm game, so turf protection is something we need to do, especially now that QComms’ gaining a lot of traction from competitors. That's an ongoing activity, making sure that we are ahead of the game from our competitors, improving ROI on campaigns, and improving visibility in the slots that matter to us.
GC: What do you think of some of the future capabilities and features from GobbleCube, such as day-parted views and aligning POs with availability?
Upcoming: Intraday and Inventory Insights
ND: There is definitely some intelligence to be built around at a category-level, say at an intraday level to know what the movement is within different time slots. As we grow and as our market shares saturate on the platforms, it is very important for us to understand these nuances, and act upon them. This could be a big input from GobbleCube - how we could look at deploying visibility on the platform for sure.
One big challenge that we have currently is marrying the availability data that we see on GobbleCube to the action points when we look at the list of POs. Currently, these two data sets are sitting on two different platforms and interfaces. There definitely needs to be a link that I'm glad you guys are working on for us, and I think that's definitely going to help us. It obviously brings down the TAT in deciding what SKUs we need to prioritize and where.