How eCommerce Analytics helped a native beauty brand to scale growth 2x times in 36 months

About Pilgrim

Pilgrim is a beauty, health and personal care direct-to-consumer brand founded by Anurag Kedia and Gagandeep Makker in July 2019. Both Kedia and Makker are IIT alumni and bring to the table a collective rich experience of 20+ years in entrepreneurship and brand building. The idea behind the name was to connect the wanderlust spirit of the millennial with India’s cultural tradition. Pilgrim is based out of Mumbai and celebrated its third birthday in 2022! 

The fact that the entire product range is free of 20 known toxic ingredients, 100% vegan and suitable for all climates and skin types makes the brand unique to the domestic market, with its Korean-inspired beauty range alone responsible for driving 75 % of its growth.  The brand grew from bagging its first customer in Gujarat and listing their first product on Flipkart in March 2020, to  now having 2 million+ buyers! 

Pilgrim’s sales in Q1 of 2022 grossed INR 5 crores, and it’s expanding its presence by setting up offline stores across the country. The plan is to scale revenue growth by 10x before the year ends. 

The founders credit the brand’s success to the clean beauty wave in India that satisfies the millennial shopper’s quest for toxin-free ingredients. It’s for this very reason that Pilgrim discloses its ingredients and remains transparent about the alternatives the R&D team have successfully come up with to ensure products are safe to use and stable. 

What differentiates Pilgrim from other homegrown D2C personal care brands, is their motto to be loyal to consumers rather than have it the other way around.  Pilgrim was the recipient of the Femina Power Brands award in 2021-22 and is recognized by Inc42 as a fast-growing beauty brand. 

An Omnichannel-friendly Data Analytics for D2C- the Challenge.

The Pilgrim brand markets itself as a thoughtful brand after identifying a market gap where the younger generation prefers to invest in affordable personal care that upholds global dermatological standards. The company currently sells 35+ products across hair, face and bath-body within the price range of INR 30-900. Their  retail strategy involves multi-platform selling including their website. 

Pilgrim’s engagement programs drive their secondary sales, reaching figures of upto 5 crores a month, with a third of their sales coming in from the D2C website and 2/3rds from channel partners giving them approximately 100,000 customers month-on-month!

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 The biggest challenges Pilgrim faced over the past year was 

1. The disruption of the supply chain at various points. 
2. Procurement of materials from overseas to meet the ~30x rise in order volume.
3. Packing was rudimentary and labor-intensive. The founders themselves did the packing and ground coordination with courier partners to fulfill orders.
4. Lack of predictive data to forecast stock levels, order quantities, product category and preferences.

Coming from core engineering backgrounds, both Anurag and Gagan realized that a brand is only as good as its data. Prior field experience taught them that analytics was essential to know how the business was doing with respect to its growth, gains and customer satisfaction. 

This was the deciding factor in the brand coming onboard EasyEcom from the very start. The brand wanted a platform that could not only give them a bird’s eye-view of inventory, warehouse, carriers and orders but also features a comprehensive reporting analytics suite from where the brand’s financial, sales and operational performance could be tracked, measured and improved.

Pilgrim X EasyEcom- How eCommerce Reporting Analytics Saved and Made the Brand’s Day!

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Pilgrim integrates across platforms like Shopify and marketplaces like Nykaa and Amazon. They receive B2B orders from Nykaa and other partners in addition to the offline orders directly in-store, which is included in the omnichannel eCommerce operations dashboard.

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Since coming onboard EasyEcom, the Pilgrim supply chain team has experienced improved efficiency by leveraging reports across tax, inventory, order and sales.
 

The system has enabled Pilgrim to reach a near 95% order fulfillment rate with:

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1. Simplified inventory management and order management.
2. 100% accuracy in stock availability across offline and online sales channels.
3. 2x growth in order count month-on-month from February 2022, with a 70% sales load in the month of August.
4. 100% tax compliance with complete visibility into sales bills, SKU-wise reports for all orders by warehouse, customer details, invoice date, state, payment type and taxable value.
5. Order volume boost for both wholesale (from 1 lac to 2 lac units) and B2C (50,000).
6. Inventory and warehouse optimization with 100% precision in stock and order status via inventory stock status and GRN reports.

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The wealth of data contained within the tax reports enable the Pilgrim team to predict future sales using a forecasting model. This isn’t the least bit surprising, given that this report calculates the available quantity of SKUs in order to update listings with actual availability. The team can see the number of items of a product that was received and separate it from those that were reserved for an existing order. The other report the team frequently looks at would be the GRN report, which makes the process of creating and tracking purchase orders for products received in a specific time duration easier. 

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“ Pilgrim has been using EasyEcom as its eCommerce arm since we went live in 2019 with our first marketplace listing. Coming onboard the system has streamlined our inventory and order management to such an extent that we can handle seasonal orders, sale days and keep track of the order count as it grows. I joined Pilgrim in February 2022 and my team and I regularly look at the tax sales bills SKU-wise report which contains every detail we need to know our order value, which is easier to match to the warehouse and customer. I am wholly satisfied with the support I’ve received from the tech team whenever an issue has cropped up and appreciate the quick turnaround in resolving them so that our operations are back and in full swing.”

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Nilesh Andhale

Supply Chain Manager

DiscoverPilgrim

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