India’s challenger brands are growing two to three times faster than their broader categories, with many reaching the ₹100 crore annual revenue milestone in just two to four years. Against this backdrop, Google, WPP Media and Elevation Capital have released The Disruptor’s Toolkit: The 0 to ₹500 Crore Playbook for Challenger Brands. Based on a study of 1,200 challenger brand shoppers conducted with Kantar, portfolio analysis and founder interviews, the playbook examines how emerging businesses can build credibility, capture demand and scale.
“The traditional marketing funnel is pretty much dead,” says Satya Raghavan, Director, Marketing Partners, Google India, explaining how consumer behaviour has changed the way brands approach growth. The conventional journey from awareness to consideration and purchase is collapsing, with consumers increasingly searching, scrolling, surfing and shopping simultaneously.
Speaking to IMPACT, Raghavan and Ashwin Padmanabhan, COO, WPP Media South Asia, discuss the findings of The Disruptor’s Toolkit, the challenges challenger brands face as they scale, and why building demand and capturing existing intent must go hand in hand.
One of the most significant findings is consumers’ growing willingness to experiment. According to the report, 64% of shoppers are willing to try a new brand even if it falls short of expectations, while 55% of challenger brand buyers move from discovery to purchase within a couple of days.
For Padmanabhan, this shift also challenges the traditional separation between brand-building and performance marketing. “The purpose of every single piece of advertising is to sell. There is no distinction between performance and branding,” he says.
Successful challenger brands, he explains, understand the need to capture existing purchase intent while creating new demand. However, scaling beyond the initial stages requires brands to look beyond the immediate point of sale and build a broader presence across consumer touchpoints.
Breaking the ₹100 crore glass ceiling
Padmanabhan describes the ₹100 crore milestone as a ‘glass ceiling’ for challenger brands. While digital infrastructure, affordable data, UPI, marketplaces and quick commerce have made it easier for emerging businesses to reach consumers, moving beyond this stage requires a different approach.
“Both the modes have been broken into,” he says, referring to the traditional advantages of distribution and access to large-format media that legacy brands enjoyed. Digital commerce has opened up distribution opportunities, while targeted advertising and creator partnerships allow smaller brands to establish a strong presence in specific markets without requiring the budgets traditionally associated with mass media.
However, Padmanabhan believes that the fundamentals of successful challenger brands remain unchanged. Their focus on product quality, packaging and customer experience continues to differentiate them. He cites the example of a T-shirt brand whose founder followed up with a customer a month after purchase to check whether the product retained its shape after repeated washes. For Padmanabhan, such attention to the consumer experience reflects a founder-led commitment to delivering on the brand promise.
Raghavan adds that challenger brands often begin by tapping into existing demand before expanding their efforts to create demand. As consumer searches become more detailed and conversational, brands have opportunities to reach people with specific needs and preferences.
Search and YouTube emerge as trust-markers
While discovery has become faster, consumer trust remains critical to conversion. The report finds that more than 70% of shoppers would question a challenger brand’s legitimacy if it cannot be found on Google Search or YouTube. Raghavan says consumers increasingly use these platforms to verify brands, research products and evaluate recommendations before making a purchase. “Google surfaces, Google Search and YouTube serve as that barometer of trust,” he says.
According to him, 79% of shoppers turn to Google Search during the compressed purchase journey, while 70% use YouTube. The report also notes that shopping watch time on YouTube has increased by 55% year-on-year. Creators, reviews and product demonstrations are consequently becoming important elements of the decision-making process. Padmanabhan believes creators should no longer be treated as a separate marketing activity but integrated into the overall strategy. “Creators have to be the default part of every marketing plan,” he says, adding that the choice of creator and the way they are deployed will depend on the category and the brand’s stage of growth.
Raghavan points to the growing role of creator-led commerce, where affiliate links on platforms such as Flipkart, Myntra and Amazon allow audiences to move from product recommendations to purchases.
From capturing intent to creating demand
As brands grow, the challenge shifts from converting existing demand to expanding their reach. Padmanabhan says businesses need to explore multiple consumer touchpoints, including YouTube, television, connected TV and other media surfaces, while connecting these investments to commerce wherever possible. He also stresses the importance of bringing data, media, technology and commerce together instead of treating individual channels as silos. This integrated approach, according to him, helps brands understand where their next source of growth could emerge.
The playbook maps this progression across three stages: anchoring, from ₹0 to ₹150 crore; acceleration, from ₹150 crore to ₹300 crore; and institutionalisation, from ₹300 crore to ₹500 crore. The recommendations range from owning a clear product niche and building credibility to expanding into quick commerce and offline retail, strengthening pricing power and integrating sales channels into an omnichannel engine.
For brands navigating fragmented consumer attention, the opportunity lies in connecting the dots between discovery, trust and purchase.
As Raghavan puts it, “There are some distinct learnings like how time from consideration to purchase is even more compressed. How Google services act like a trust-verifier.” He expects these insights to sharpen marketing approaches, with some of their applications likely to be visible in campaigns during Diwali.
