If you’ve spent five minutes on Instagram or any marketplace app lately, you’ve seen it—flash sale, bumper bonanza, flat 50 per cent off, buy one get one, limited time only offers. While new-age brands offer frequent discounts, established brands watch from the sidelines, occasionally stepping in with a festive offer but largely guarding their price tags carefully. The divide says less about generosity and more about strategy.
For digital-first brands, discounts aren’t optional, they’re as necessary as oxygen. Konark Gaur, Chief Marketing Officer, Pilgrim views them as a deliberate growth lever, not a reactive tactic.
“We use offers to unlock urgency, de-risk trial for first-time users, and expand the funnel, without compromising on long-term brand equity.” The playbook is structured: concentrate incentives during high-intent windows—launches, festive peaks, and key shopping moments, where they can accelerate acquisition and drive scale. The strategy appears to be working. Pilgrim recorded 105 per cent YoY revenue growth in FY25, reaching `408.3 crore. Yet, the calibration is intentional. Discounts are deployed to drive momentum, not to define positioning. For Pilgrim, promotions are accelerators of growth—not the brand’s identity.
At Plum, the distinction is sharper. Akansha Baliga, Marketing Lead, Plum, does not romanticise sales. “Discounts work to help push customers to buy. But if customers only buy you on sale, you don’t have a brand, you have a deal. And if your product doesn’t work, they are not coming back. We use offers to accelerate entry, not to train behaviour.” It captures the balancing act: use the hook, do not become the hook. The urgency to discount is partly structural. New-age brands are born into clutter. Skincare, furniture, electronics and staples compete for attention in crowded feeds and marketplaces. Loyalty is fragile and consideration cycles are shorter. “Attention is fragmented. So marketing has to be sharper, faster, and culturally aware—not louder,” Baliga adds. In that environment, price becomes the fastest language.
In categories such as furniture, however, the rules shift. Kulbhushan Atkar, Chief Marketing Officer, Pepperfry, draws a distinction between impulse and high-consideration purchases. “Furniture is more of a very high consideration purchase. So, customers normally start their journey weeks or months before in order to decide on what kind of furniture they want to buy.” Discounts, he says, are not demand generators. They are ‘one of several converging trigger points, but do not create demand on their own.’
Instead of blanket reductions, Pepperfry leans into precision. “Our discounts are precision-led customer cohorts led and not at blanket level,” Atkar explains. During festive periods and wedding seasons, the brand sees spikes of 30 to 35 per cent over business as usual, according to the company, but even those peaks are flattening. “Discount is not very sporadic, it’s more of a flattened curve. Instead of one big season, you get many more micro seasons.” The brand now engineers moments such as summer refreshes or home renovation pushes, spreading momentum across the year. Discounts exist, but they are tactical. Trust, design, warranties and post-purchase experience do the heavy-lifting.
Legacy brands approach the lever differently. Deepesh Ladiwal, Marketing Lead, Consumer Business, Asus, frames the debate directly. “That’s why they are called legacy brands. Legacy brands are legacy brands because of the customer trust they have built over a period of time.” In personal computers (PCs), he argues, consumers already know the shortlist: HP, Dell, Lenovo, Acer and Asus. The job is less about pushing offers and more about tailoring solutions across demographics, from baby boomers to Gen Z. Trust here operates as compounding capital. Younger brands, he suggests, often turn to discounting when operational scale or customisation is harder to achieve.
For a heritage staple such as KRBL, the long game is explicit. Kunal Sharma, Vice President – Marketing and Organised Trade, KRBL, sees sales promotions as trial-drivers but not loyalty-builders. “While short-term sale activities like these help brands generate trial for themselves, for long-term consumer acquisition, you have to really work on long-term brand building. Nothing can work better than that.” Brands that have advertised consistently for decades have ‘created a moat for themselves.’ Smaller brands may move in and out of the consideration funnel, but enduring recall belongs to those who invested early. On loyalty, Sharma adds, “It is something that I would say is broadly dead in today’s world.” Each purchase becomes a fresh moment of truth defined by availability, visibility and relevance. Discounts alone cannot secure that win.
In skincare, credibility and product science shape the equation. Pranay Rao, Chief Marketing Officer, Sebamed India, points to prescription-led awareness and expert marketing. “pH 5.5 is started by us. We are the pioneers of that.” The brand reports 60 to 70 per cent repeat purchase, according to the company, in a category where younger consumers often experiment. Rao cautions against overuse of early promotions: “If you do too much of sales promotion at the beginning and you affect your gross margins too early, then you will not be able to sustain it in the long run.” Heavy discounting risks conditioning both consumers and trade to expect lower prices. “It’s a slippery slope,” he says, noting that premium positioning and constant discounting rarely sit comfortably together.
Sanjay Trehan, Digital strategist, echoes that caution. “Frequent bumper sales serve a limited purpose: stock clearance and short term sales spike. As a tactical strategy, it’s fine but can’t be used to build long-term brand loyalty and customer sustenance.” If the entire sales matrix hinges on offers, reputation erodes and persona blurs. Deal-driven audiences, he notes, are ‘like mercenaries and the brand’s victory is at best pyrrhic,’ Yet the temptation persists, particularly for emerging brands operating under investor pressure and algorithm-driven marketplaces, where velocity is rewarded and spikes are amplified.
The irony is that across categories, the fundamentals remain consistent. Product efficacy matters. Trust compounds over time. Post-purchase experience determines repeat behaviour. Even Pilgrim, with its triple-digit growth, speaks of embedding empathy and customer focus into its culture. Pepperfry invests in physical studios to enable touch and feel. Sebamed reinforces its dermatological positioning. KRBL emphasises long-term brand-building. The divergence lies not in belief but in sequencing. New-age brands often use discounts to earn discovery. Established brands rely on accumulated equity to avoid deploying them too frequently. One is fighting for entry into the consideration set. The other is defending recall.
Over time, that gap may narrow. As challenger brands mature, their reliance on deep price cuts may taper. As legacy players confront digitally native consumers, they may experiment with sharper, more targeted promotions. The flattened curve described by Pepperfry, multiple micro seasons instead of a single festival surge, could become a broader industry pattern. For now, however, the contrast is visible across feeds and storefronts. Growth must be delivered without eroding value. Trial must convert into repeat. Visibility must not cannibalise credibility.
In the end, discounts are neither villain nor saviour. They are strategic tools. When used carefully, they open doors. Used excessively, they redefine brand perception in ways that are difficult to reverse. A discount may bring a consumer through the door. Sustained value determines whether they stay.
