The D2C & Retail Summit 2026 will take place on August 19, 2026, at The Leela Ambience, Gurugram, bringing India’s consumer, commerce and retail ecosystem under one roof
The seventh edition will convene 600+ founders, CXOs, investors and operators across two stages, featuring workshops, firesides, panels, and high-impact sessions on AI, quick commerce, distribution, profitability, retention, exports and new-age retail
The summit will host Shri Piyush Goyal, Hon’ble Minister of Commerce & Industry, Government of India, as Guest of Honour, along with leading founders and operators including Aman Gupta, Viraj Bahl, Siddharth Dungarwal, Vedant Modi, Abhishek Ganguli and more, to decode the playbooks shaping India’s new commerce economy
India’s retail story has moved past the old online-versus-offline debate. The new contest is over control — who owns the shelf, the search result, the delivery promise, the customer relationship and the margin.
Quick commerce has rewritten consumer expectations. AI is beginning to reshape operations, discovery, retention and demand planning. Investors are asking harder questions on capital efficiency before writing the next cheque. The D2C boom is no longer just a story of digital-first brands chasing scale; it has matured into a structural reset in how India buys, sells and builds consumer brands.
Inc42 has tracked this shift since before it had a name — through deep industry coverage, news, features, founder-led conversations, FAST42, The D2C Retreat and six editions of The D2C Summit.
Now in its seventh edition, The D2C & Retail Summit is where that coverage comes alive in one room — bringing together the founders, investors and operators building India’s new commerce economy to compare notes on what is working, what is breaking and what needs to change next.
The opportunity keeps getting bigger. India’s ecommerce market is projected to grow from $165 Bn in 2026 to $450 Bn by 2031, clocking a nearly 22% CAGR. By 2030, ecommerce is expected to account for more than 20% of India’s total retail spend, as overall retail penetration nearly doubles from around 12% to 22%.
This growth is playing out in a market where retail contributes almost 30% of India’s GDP, yet organised retail accounts for just 12%–15% of the sector. That leaves a $300 Bn opportunity for digital-first and omnichannel brands racing to build the next generation of Indian consumer businesses.
This is the landscape The D2C & Retail Summit 2026 will decode on 19 August 2026 at The Leela Ambience, Gurugram. This year’s theme — Commerce In The Age Of AI & 10-Min Delivery — captures the shift shaping every consumer brand today.
D2C now demands much more than digital acquisition. Brands need to understand quick commerce economics, omnichannel distribution, AI-led operating leverage, customer retention, conversion, delivery costs and capital discipline — all at once. The brands that can knit these pieces together will define India’s next wave of ₹1,000 Cr and ₹10,000 Cr consumer businesses.
The seventh edition will be graced by Shri Piyush Goyal, Hon’ble Minister of Commerce & Industry, Government of India, as the Guest of Honour. His presence will set the tone for a larger conversation on India’s consumer economy, manufacturing, exports, trade and the opportunity for homegrown brands to build for Bharat and the world.
To bring these conversations to the forefront, The D2C & Retail Summit 2026 will host 600+ founders, CXOs, investors and operators, with 15+ high-impact sessions and 40+ D2C and retail leaders spanning legacy brands, new-age disruptors, investors and commerce enablers.
Presented by PhonePe, co-presented by Shadowfax and Glance, and powered by Gupshup, Element Wellness, NITRO, Base, SafeGold, Snapmint and Stelcore, the summit will unpack what it takes to build durable, capital-efficient consumer brands in this new era.
The associate partners for the seventh edition include Rukam Capital, Sagepilot, Losung360, Ginesys, Similarweb, Juspay, Zence by Easyrewardz, Dashverse.ai, Cashfree, StoreSignal by CrossML, Rootle and Importerr.
The summit’s marquee founder sessions will bring together some of India’s most closely watched consumer-brand leaders for candid conversations on scale, distribution, manufacturing, category expansion and long-term brand building.
Sauce, Scale & Shelf: Inside Veeba’s ₹1,000 Cr FMCG Engine will trace how Veeba moved from QSR kitchens to a ₹1,000 Cr+ consumer brand by building B2B credibility, manufacturing control, product innovation and general trade depth, while using quick commerce and ecommerce for discovery without confusing platform velocity with a durable FMCG moat.
Snitch @ ₹900 Cr: How Speed, Stores & Community Built A Cult Menswear Brand will decode Snitch’s jump from ₹243 Cr in FY24 to ₹900 Cr in FY26, its 21-day drop cycles, made-to-demand production, PIN-code-led offline expansion and the community engine powering repeat demand through Snitch Squad, UGC-led discovery and 1,000+ micro-influencers.
Manyavar’s Phygital Makeover: Rewiring Wedding Retail For A Digital India will explore how the brand is bridging offline retail with ecommerce, CRM, AI-led design and appointment-led shopping journeys without cannibalising a touch-and-feel wedding retail category.
The $1 Bn Sportswear Bet: Building India’s Sportswear House will unpack India’s sportswear shift beyond cricket, the rise of athlete-led brand building, and how manufacturing depth, retail experience and multi-brand ambition are shaping the next phase of Indian sportswear.
The day will also feature OFF/BEAT With Aman Gupta, an unfiltered AMA on building consumer brands, staying culturally relevant at scale, the boAt journey and what his next chapter with OFF/BEAT reveals about where Indian brands are headed.
Across the main stage, the summit will bring together operators, investors and enablers to decode the big questions shaping consumer brand strategy in 2026 and beyond.
Sessions such as The Distribution Reset: Winning Shelf, Search & Speed, Is Quick Commerce A Margin Trap? and Growth Without The Burn: Engineering Profitable Growth will examine the new rules of consumer-brand scale — from marketplace visibility and quick commerce speed to offline trust, SKU discipline, pricing power, unit economics and capital-efficient growth.
The discussions will explore how brands can build distribution moats in a fragmented market, protect margins across channels, reduce dependence on paid visibility and use sharper operating systems to improve leverage without slowing growth momentum.
A dedicated investor-led panel, The Trends & Signals Shaping The Next Decade Of Consumer Commerce, will bring together Manu Chandra of Sauce.vc, Archana Jahagirdar of Rukam Capital, Arjun Vaidya of V3 Ventures and Kannan Sitaram of Fireside Ventures to discuss which categories are gaining real momentum, which ones are getting overcrowded, and what investors now look for — retention, gross margins, distribution quality, AI-led operating leverage, capital efficiency and the ability to build towards durable exits.
As commerce gets faster, the cost of fulfilment, conversion and retention is becoming harder to ignore.
Sessions such as The Real Cost Of A Delivered Order, The Conversion Stack For Consumer Brands, Turning One-Time Buyers Into Repeat Customers and What Do India’s Shopping Patterns Reveal About The Next Growth Wave? will unpack the operating layer behind consumer growth.
Together, these conversations will examine the real cost of ecommerce fulfilment beyond courier rates, why high-intent shoppers drop off despite strong product interest, how transaction data and payment preferences reveal changing consumer behaviour, and how brands can use conversational journeys, AI-led flows and sharper segmentation to improve repeat purchase and LTV.
From RTO, NDR and delivery TAT to cart abandonment, prepaid mix, payment success, cohort behaviour and post-purchase engagement, the sessions will focus on the data and operating discipline needed to convert demand into delivered revenue and long-term customer relationships.
The summit will also look at the next frontier for Indian consumer brands: exports.
Cracking Export Economics Beyond The Topline will examine how consumer brands should choose export markets, calculate landed costs, navigate shipping, warehousing, duties, marketplace fees, returns and FX impact, and localise product, packaging, claims and storytelling without losing the brand’s Indian identity.
This track will connect closely with the larger conversation around India’s consumer economy, manufacturing, quality, trade and the opportunity for homegrown brands to build not just for India, but for global markets.
Beyond the main stage conversations, the summit will also feature hands-on workshops designed to help founders and growth leaders move from ideas to execution. Building Agentic Commerce Journeys That Turn Intent Into Sales will decode how brands can move beyond generic discovery and keyword-led shopping to build AI-led journeys that understand consumer intent, personalise recommendations and improve conversion.
In How To Turn Marketplace Listings Into A Scalable Revenue Channel workshop, the focus will shift to cracking marketplace growth across platforms — from catalogue hygiene, PDP optimisation and ad-spend discipline to pricing, inventory, fulfilment, ratings and the operating systems needed to turn listings into a scalable revenue channel.
Join us at The D2C & Retail Summit 2026 to decode the playbooks powering India’s next wave of consumer brands — from cracking quick commerce economics and export markets to building AI-native operations, profitable distribution and capital-efficient scale.
Beyond the insights, the summit will offer access to 600+ handpicked founders, CXOs, investors and operators, and a place inside one of India’s most influential D2C and retail communities.
Source: Inc42 - Startups
