Speed, Scale, Success: Indian Consumer Tech in 2024

Remember when everyone declared consumer tech dead as we entered the year? 2024 had other plans.

This year taught us a fundamental truth that often gets lost in the noise: when you genuinely solve consumer problems, you win. Period. The evidence? It's everywhere.

Let's start with quick commerce, perhaps the most compelling validation of this principle. Once dismissed as a “pandemic fad,” quick commerce has proven its staying power, completely transforming consumer behavior in ways that were unimaginable even a couple of years ago and cementing its place as the next big thing.

The Indian story is particularly fascinating. We’ve always been a big believer in and a close witness to this platform shift in consumer tech through our partnership with Swiggy. Harsha was the first to anticipate this need for convenience beyond food delivery, leading him to start Instamart in 2020 when grocery as a category had been challenging for e-commerce players globally. Today, quick commerce is the fastest-growing consumer category by a significant margin.

🏍️💨Fast and Curious: Indians Develop a Need for Speed

A disproportionate share of venture funding has gone into quick commerce this year. Swiggy's stellar IPO (the largest in tech globally), Zepto's remarkable growth trajectory (and $1.35B in CY24 funding), and Zomato's public market performance (2.5x valuation jump on the back of Blinkit) signal growing investor confidence in this space and proof that serving real consumer needs creates real value.

The Indian consumer’s hunger for speed has forced incumbents to radically reengineer their operations and supply chain infrastructure, in many cases building new capabilities from the ground up (e.g., Flipkart Minutes, Amazon Tez). Speed isn't just a nice-to-have anymore – it's become the default expectation. These expectations have rapidly expanded beyond just grocery and into lifestyle, apparel, and beauty.

The battleground remains dynamic, with companies competing across price, speed, and assortment axes. Quick commerce is also becoming verticalized, leading to a remodeling of how marketplaces approach consumer experience. Moreover, the emergence of middleware players, particularly in logistics (e.g., Blitz), tailored for quick commerce is laying the groundwork for a vibrant ecosystem.

Beyond the established players, we're seeing exciting new quick commerce opportunities emerge across verticals, particularly in fashion and food – categories where consumer behavior is rapidly evolving.

In fashion, we're seeing a fascinating interplay between personalization and convenience. The key trade-off is between inventory variety and delivery speed, with both omnichannel approaches (e.g., Myntra M-Now) and pure dark store models (e.g., Slikk) emerging. Specific use cases that particularly excite us include party wear, office wear, try-and-buy festive wear, and rapid returns—scenarios where speed genuinely enhances the customer experience.

Food is another category witnessing innovative models built around the core trade-off between freshness and delivery speed. Different players are taking distinct approaches: As the first-mover, Swiggy once again transformed the food ordering experience with its 10-minute offering Bolt, which delivers fresh food and snacks through an omnichannel model. Bolt has rapidly scaled to 400+ cities within two months. Meanwhile, Zepto Café and Swish focus on pre-cooked food through cloud kitchens. With Bistro, Zomato is now taking another shot at quick food delivery after shutting Zomato Instant last year. We're particularly excited about snacks as a category – its low fatigue, high repeat, and quick production nature makes it ideal for quick commerce.

This is still early days and we'll see a lot getting built in this space in 2025.

👛Companies Discover Indians Can Open Their Wallets

But 2024's story isn't just about speed. This was the year Indian consumers decisively demonstrated their willingness to pay for digital value, moving beyond free models reliant on ads. At the beginning of the year, we wrote about how Indian social and content platforms are pioneering novel monetization models. Several young companies, such as AppsForBharat, FRND, ShareChat, Seekho, AstroTalk, and PocketFM, have hit escape velocity in their monetization journey this year while remaining very capital-efficient for their scales.

The intersection of these new monetization models with generative AI is particularly exciting. As AI dramatically reduces content generation timelines, we're seeing the emergence of a new wave of content formats. Ultra-short dramas, digital comics, and interactive content platforms with high user control are finding growing audiences. AI enables rapid experimentation with episodic content and troupe testing to identify winning formats. Micropayments are emerging as the natural model to monetize these novel formats.

✨India Catches AI Fever

The broader generative AI trend has seen massive consumer adoption, with India leading the way. We’re seeing deep integration of AI across consumer applications, from personalization to content creation to shopping experiences. Indian consumers have shown a remarkable appetite for AI-powered experiences, pushing companies to innovate faster and create more sophisticated solutions. This trend is particularly exciting because it demonstrates India's potential to not just adopt but lead in next-generation consumer tech and empowers Indian founders to build uniquely Indian solutions to serve our diverse consumer base better than ever.

The Year Public Markets Fell In ❤️ With Marketplaces

Finally, 2024 marked a watershed moment for India's internet economy in the public markets. The successful IPOs of Swiggy, ixigo, and FirstCry from our portfolio were strong validations of India's consumer tech story and have created a virtuous cycle of confidence in the ecosystem. The markets have rewarded new-age tech companies demonstrating sustained growth and profitability. In addition to the maturing of Indian consumer tech, this renewed public market appetite also demonstrates that building for Indian consumers can create lasting, valuable businesses at scale and deliver long-term value to investors.

The message for founders is clear: Block out the noise about saturated markets or impossible problems. Focus instead on creating delightful, compelling solutions for users. Don't get bogged down by commentary about how certain spaces are already filled. If you're solving a real consumer need in a differentiated way, there's always room for innovation. That's where enduring value lies.

As we look ahead to 2025, one message stands out: the opportunity has never been bigger, but it’s time to get back to basics.

Let's build.

New Partnerships & Growing Relationships

This year, we were fortunate to partner with several pioneering companies that are reshaping their respective sectors.

Schmooze caught our attention with their innovative approach to dating for Gen-Z. In our investment memo, we detail how their meme-based matching approach and deep understanding of Gen Z psychology positions them uniquely in the dating landscape. By leveraging AI and the universal language of memes, they've created a platform that goes beyond surface-level connections, helping users forge meaningful connections based on shared humor and interests.

In the gaming space, we invested in Virbhumi, an innovative mobile strategy card game bringing the Mahabharat saga to life. The game's unique approach combines the rich cultural heritage of Indian mythology with engaging gameplay mechanics.

We also backed Alle, an AI-powered personal styling platform that's revolutionizing the fashion discovery experience. Alle provides personalized fashion advice based on occasion, body type, and facial features while seamlessly connecting users to products across multiple brands. Their innovative approach earned the "Best App" and "Best for Fun" awards at Google Play's Best of 2024 awards.

On the follow-on front, we doubled down on our conviction in several portfolio companies.

We co-led Atlys’ $20M Series B as it rapidly evolves from a visa application platform to a comprehensive travel services provider. Their 20x growth over the last year demonstrates the massive opportunity in streamlining international travel infrastructure.

We also backed ShopDeck's $8 million round, supporting their mission to democratize D2C online commerce with their 'D2C-in-a-box' solution enabling merchants to focus on growth and profitability through their own channels.

We also participated in AppsForBharat's $18M Series B as they continued to digitize India's devotional needs through Sri Mandir. With over 30 million downloads and 500,000+ devotees conducting 2.7 million pujas, they're creating meaningful impact at scale. Similarly, our continued partnership with Wishlink reflects our belief in their vision for creator-led commerce, where they're delivering 30-50% more efficient conversion funnels for brands.

Shaping India’s Consumer Tech Narrative

Throughout the year, we shaped India's consumer tech narrative through a series of thought leadership initiatives, knowledge-sharing events, and insightful conversations.

Challenging Conventional Wisdom With ‘What If… We Win?’

Our journey began with the "What If... We Win?" series, where we challenged prevailing pessimism about consumer tech opportunities in India. We explored how new-age marketplaces are reimagining complex categories, made a compelling case for the $100B opportunity in building for India's affluent segment, and examined how Indian platforms are pioneering innovative monetization models. Building on the monetization theme, we published a comprehensive two-part playbook for consumer tech founders mapping India's evolution from a 'won't pay' to a 'will pay' market and offered benchmark metrics and case studies from local & global success stories.

Reimagining Consumer Monetization

We brought these insights to life at our ‘New Era of Consumer Monetization’ Kickstarter event, where the founders of ShareChat, AppsForBharat, Seekho, and Dashtoon shared their experiences in building sustainable consumer businesses. The event's fireside chat and panel discussion offered practical insights on implementing different monetization models based on user behavior, content type, and business metrics.

The GenAI Revolution in Consumer Tech

As GenAI emerged as a transformative force, we invested heavily in understanding its implications for consumer applications. Our two-part research series began with The State of GenAI in Consumer Applications, providing a comprehensive snapshot of adoption trends and emerging use cases. We followed this with GenAI in Consumer Applications: Our Thesis for India, where we identified six exciting themes with immense potential for innovation.

To catalyze innovation in this space, we launched the AI Ideathon, a first-of-its-kind competition for reimagining consumer applications with AI. The quality of submissions showcased the incredible potential of Indian builders in this space.

Stepping Up Our Engagement with the Gaming Community

Gaming continued to be a major focus area for us this year. We launched GameOn, a knowledge platform supported by Epic Games, to help developers leverage alternative distribution platforms. This initiative culminated in the GameOn Hackathon, where developers created innovative Fortnite islands with UEFN, winning ₹7 lakh in prizes. Our technical deep-dive webinar on UEFN with Epic Games and the gaming workshop with Meta in Bengaluru helped creators understand the opportunities in this space.

We actively shared our perspectives at major industry events throughout the year. At the Indian Gaming Convention 2024, Kshitij Jayakrishnan (Vice President) shared how AI is driving a platform shift in gaming. Mayank Khanduja (Partner) discussed the potential of UGC platforms, particularly Fortnite and Unreal Engine, at IGDC 2024. We also engaged with the developer community at IGDC Dev Day 2024 events in Chennai and Kochi, sharing our investor perspective on gaming finance through discussions with gaming publishers and developers.

We also partnered with Makers Fund to host an exclusive Gaming Mixer in Hyderabad, bringing together 125+ leading game developers, global investors, and industry operators for an evening of inspiring conversations about the future of gaming in India.

Podcasts From Our Stable

Throughout the year, we brought you inspiring founder stories through our Day One podcast series. We dove deep into Seekho's journey of building a "Netflix for learning" and making the bold decision to go paid-only when they had just one month of runway left (Read the Seekho investment memo here). We explored AppsForBharat's mission to digitize devotion, Mesa School of Business’ approach (listen here) to reimagining business education, and ixigo's remarkable 17-year journey to IPO.

Our SummitUp podcast series complemented these founder stories with deep dives into emerging sectors. We explored the future of gaming in India, examined how rising affluence and changing demographics are reshaping travel, and unpacked key trends and opportunities in consumer GenAI applications, aligning with our broader thesis on the space.

Looking Ahead to 2025

To support the next generation of founders, we launched (Out Of) Office Hours this year, dedicated sessions for operators contemplating entrepreneurship. These sessions provided a safe space for ideation and guidance, and the overwhelming response showed us just how many talented operators are considering taking the leap to entrepreneurship.

As we enter 2025, we remain more excited than ever about the potential of Indian consumer tech. We're seeing founders build with increased capital efficiency, focusing on sustainable growth and real value creation. We're grateful to all our founders, partners, and the broader ecosystem for an incredible 2024. If you're building something exciting in consumer tech, we'd love to hear from you at consumer@elevationcapital.com.

Here's to another year of innovation and impact!

See you on the other side!