Healthy snacking brand Open Secret raises over ₹50 Cr from Desai Brothers Group to push deeper into offline retail

Fact

Over ₹50 Cr (~$5.2 Mn) has been raised by Mumbai-based Open Secret, founded in 2019 by Ahana Gautam, led by Desai Brothers Group and comprising ₹30 Cr in primary equity plus institutional debt, per Inc42 and YourStory. The healthy-snacks brand, spanning cookies, baked vegetable chips, protein powders, dry fruits, namkeen and cereals, already sits in more than 500 retail outlets and claims to have crossed ₹200 Cr in annual recurring revenue with 10% month-on-month growth. Manufacturing, distribution and physical retail expansion are where the funds are headed, with a stated target of ₹1,000 Cr ARR within three years while staying profitable.

Interpretation

A ₹200 Cr ARR brand raising primarily to fund offline distribution, not digital marketing, is the same pattern this newsletter has now tracked across food and FMCG D2C repeatedly this year, brands that already have real revenue are treating general trade and modern retail shelf space as the next growth lever once digital acquisition costs stop paying back cleanly. Partnering with an FMCG-adjacent group for manufacturing and distribution muscle, rather than a pure financial investor, is also a distribution-first choice, not just a capital-raising one.

Action

Food and snacking D2C brands above roughly ₹50-100 Cr ARR should benchmark Open Secret’s ₹200 Cr ARR to 500-outlet ratio, roughly ₹40 lakh ARR per outlet, when planning their own offline expansion pace, and consider strategic FMCG-adjacent capital over pure VC money specifically for the manufacturing and distribution capability it brings, not just the cheque size.

Watch next

Whether Open Secret’s 10% month-on-month growth rate holds as offline scales, how fast the retail outlet count grows toward a ₹1,000 Cr ARR target, and whether Desai Brothers Group takes similar stakes in other D2C snacking or FMCG brands.

Fact

$15 Mn (~₹145 Cr) has been raised in a Series A round by Bengaluru-based Plazza, founded in 2024 by former Zomato executive Aman Priyadarshi, co-led by Accel, Elevation Capital and Nexus Venture Partners, with existing investors All In Capital and Better Capital also participating, per StartupTalky. This follows a $1.4 Mn seed raised roughly ten months ago. The company runs neighbourhood pharmacies stocking more than 40,000 SKUs per store, about eight times a typical local pharmacy, delivering within 15-30 minutes and claiming a prescription fill rate above 95% against an industry average of 50-60%. GMV reportedly grew nearly 27x between June 2025 and March 2026, with two stores currently running in Bengaluru.

Interpretation

Three tier-1 funds co-leading a round for a company with only two live stores is a bet on the operating model, fill rate and SKU depth, not on scale already proven, and it signals medicine delivery is being underwritten as its own durable category rather than a feature Blinkit, Zepto or Flipkart Minutes will simply out-execute using existing dark-store networks. The 27x GMV growth number is early enough that it should be read as a small-base multiple, not a scale signal yet.

Action

D2C wellness and pharma-adjacent brands (OTC supplements, personal care with prescription-adjacent SKUs) should treat Plazza’s 40,000-SKU depth model as a new, better-stocked quick-commerce shelf worth testing once it expands beyond Bengaluru, rather than waiting for it to reach Blinkit or Zepto’s scale, since early listing conversations are typically easier before a platform standardises its vendor terms.

Watch next

Whether Plazza expands beyond its two Bengaluru stores in the next two quarters, how its prescription fill-rate claim holds up at scale, and whether Flipkart Minutes, Zepto or Blinkit respond with dedicated pharmacy SKU depth of their own.

Fact

A shift away from return-on-ad-spend (ROAS) toward metrics like marketing efficiency ratio (MER), blended CAC and contribution margin is underway among Indian D2C brands, per Inc42, alongside a deliberate reallocation of 20-30% of marketing budgets to retention and brand-building. Renée Cosmetics cofounder Ashutosh Valani pointed to the brand’s own ad-spend-to-revenue ratio, improved from roughly 1:1 five and a half years ago to about 0.45:1 today, though it has plateaued near 45% of revenue rather than falling below the 40% he expected, as Meta, Google and influencer costs keep climbing. Kae Capital partner Sunitha Viswanathan flagged the gap this can hide: a brand can show 3X ROAS on a campaign while its real profit margin, after cost of goods, discounts and returns, sits at just 5%.

Interpretation

The detail worth sitting with is that Renée’s spend ratio improved for years and then stalled, not kept falling, which means “growing out of” high ad-spend ratios is not guaranteed even for a brand executing well, rising platform costs can cap the improvement regardless of a brand’s own operating discipline. Kae Capital’s read, that this is a permanent reset rather than a cycle that reverses when capital gets cheap again, is the more consequential claim here for anyone still budgeting against a future where CAC comes back down.

Action

D2C founders currently tracking ROAS as their primary scale-or-cut decision metric should add contribution margin after marketing, not just ROAS, to weekly reporting this quarter, benchmark spend-to-revenue ratio against Renée’s 45% plateau rather than assuming it keeps falling with scale, and budget retention spend at 20-30% of total marketing now rather than after acquisition costs force the issue.

Watch next

Whether other funded D2C brands disclose similar spend-ratio plateaus, how fast AI-led product discovery starts pulling meaningful traffic share, and whether performance-marketing agencies begin pricing services around MER and contribution margin instead of ROAS.

Fact

An AI-powered voice bot is being piloted by Eternal’s food delivery arm Zomato, letting a select group of Bengaluru users order food by voice, describing what they are in the mood for and receiving personalised dish and restaurant recommendations before being guided through checkout, per Inc42, which verified the feature’s presence directly. Built on top of Zomato’s existing AI infrastructure, including its Gavel evaluation tool, the pilot has reportedly cut the cost of checking a single voice-bot call by 98%, from ₹450 with a human agent down to ₹10.

Interpretation

A voice interface that recommends what to eat rather than requiring a search query is Zomato testing a genuinely different discovery mechanic, not just a support-cost optimisation, closer to the AI-assistant shopping behaviour this newsletter has flagged as a coming shift in the ROAS-era piece elsewhere in this edition. Limiting it to a small Bengaluru user set before any wider claim is a sensible, low-risk way to test whether conversational ordering actually changes basket composition or just adds friction.

Action

D2C food, beverage and grocery brands selling through Zomato or Blinkit should start documenting which of their product descriptions and metadata fields would surface well in a conversational, voice-first recommendation flow now, since a wider rollout would reward brands with rich, structured product data over generic listings, the same attribute-completeness logic already playing out on Myntra’s AI shopping layer.

Watch next

Whether the pilot expands beyond Bengaluru, what conversion or basket-size data Zomato discloses if it does, and whether Swiggy or Blinkit respond with a competing voice-ordering test.