ETBWS 2025: From Urbanic to Savana: Rahul Dayama's playbook for D2C Growth
Brand World Summit 2025
,
Rahul Dayama
, founding partner at
Urbanic
, shared invaluable, impromptu insights into building and scaling D2C brands in today's dynamic digital landscape. With Urbanic and the newer
Savana
under his belt, Dayama's expertise comes from navigating the intricate relationship between brands, platforms and consumers.
The shifting sands of social media control
Dayama opened with a fundamental question: Who truly controls social media – influencers, platforms, or consumers? His initial instinct as a brand founder leaned towards platforms, given the advertising spend. However, a deeper reflection revealed a more nuanced reality. "There is no control with anyone," he concluded, emphasising the symbiotic relationship where platforms rely entirely on consumers and content creators, and brands, in turn, depend on platforms to reach those consumers.
This intricate dance necessitates a thorough understanding of a platform's "product psychology" to build an effective strategy. Dayama offered a practical example: he invests more on YouTube because its search-based nature allows content to remain relevant for a year, unlike Instagram's fleeting 48-hour window. Instagram, for him, is more of a "discovery-led platform than conversion," influencing his spending and engagement tactics.
Strategic tech investment
The second crucial pillar for D2C success, according to Dayama, is technology – but with a caveat. Many companies, when adopting tech, attempt to solve every problem at once. Dayama advocates for a focused approach. At Urbanic, a strict policy dictates: "If the GMB [Gross Merchandise Value] is not affecting at least by five per cent by the particular thing, then we will not invest anything on tech till then."
He highlighted the significant role of
influencer marketing
for Urbanic, with over 35,000 influencers across both brands and millions of pieces of content generated (more than four million for Urbanic and more than a million for Savana). This experience underscores the importance of prioritising tech investments to tackle the most impactful problems first. "My biggest takeaway from that is prioritising tech and then building on it," he summarised.
The first step
Dayama frequently fields questions about the initial steps of launching a brand. His advice is deceptively simple but profoundly effective: "First, just figure out your niche or the channel, where your audience is."
He stressed that understanding your audience goes beyond demographics; it's about observing their behavior. He recounted a personal epiphany while his tech team was meticulously defining Urbanic's target audience based on age and city. That same night, he observed a party promoter creating a guest list filled with women who "pull the crowd" and noted that Urbanic's party collection perfectly suited them. This led to a guerrilla marketing tactic: distributing free clothes to these influential club-goers. This provided immediate access to content and a highly receptive "100 per cent conversion rate" audience that might have been missed by conventional ad targeting.
"I think the first step is to figure out who your audience is, understand them, find the first channel and then you can go aggressive on it," he advised.
Building community for amplified growth
Once the initial channel is mastered, the focus shifts to building a community. Dayama pointed to Savana's growth as a testament to this. While Urbanic garnered two million mentions in six years, Savana achieved a million mentions in a much shorter span, largely by leveraging Urbanic's established community infrastructure.
He cited a campaign for Savana where they utilised a community of at least 1,000 known-performing influencers. This allowed them to execute a "one to one impact" campaign that propelled the brand above Facebook and Instagram in just three days, completing the entire initiative within a week. Their preparedness, including robust customer service (CST) for consumer feedback, further amplified the success.
In conclusion, Dayama's framework for D2C success boils down to: using social media wisely by understanding platform psychology, prioritising tech investments for maximum impact and starting by identifying your niche and truly understanding your audience's behavior to build a strong community.
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