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06/17/2026

If you're building an Indian brand, there's never been a better time to think globally.

According to Kiran Kotla, three categories are seeing massive international demand right now:

🌿 Wellness & Ayurveda
đź’„ Beauty
đź‘• Apparel & Clothing

Consumers around the world are increasingly looking for holistic health solutions, authentic beauty products, and high-quality manufacturing—and Indian brands are uniquely positioned to deliver all three.

What's even more exciting?

Indian brands are no longer competing locally. They're competing with global giants and winning attention in markets across the world.

In this clip from the Brewed Podcast, Kiran shares the categories that are creating the biggest export opportunities for Indian founders today.

Are you building in one of these spaces?

🎙️ Watch the full episode for insights on global expansion, exports, compliance, and building from India for the world.

Proven Winners Direct launched their first mobile app with Appbrew ahead of their peak spring season.The results:→ 1.7x ...
06/16/2026

Proven Winners Direct launched their first mobile app with Appbrew ahead of their peak spring season.

The results:

→ 1.7x higher conversion rate than mobile web
→ 20% higher average order value
→ 17% of total DTC revenue now coming through the app

What started as a new channel quickly became one of their highest-performing ones.

A great example of what happens when mobile is built for conversion, retention, and repeat purchases not just browsing.

Full case study in the comments.

06/16/2026

Most founders think international expansion is about finding customers.
It's not.

Before you sell globally, you need to get 4 things right:

Exports
Taxes
Foreign currency compliance
Data privacy

And the last one is where many brands get caught off guard.

GDPR isn't the only regulation anymore. CCPA exists, and now multiple US states have their own privacy laws. If you're collecting customer data across borders, "I didn't know" won't protect you.

The penalties are real. And they can be expensive.

In this clip, Kiran Kotla, Co-Founder of Dista, shares what every founder should understand before taking their business global.

If you're building from India for customers around the world, this is a conversation you can't afford to miss.

🎙️ Watch the full episode of the Brewed Podcast featuring Kiran Kotla (Dista) for more insights on global expansion, compliance, and scaling internationally.

06/11/2026

Most e-commerce brands focus on getting more traffic.

The smarter brands focus on where their best customers shop.

In this clip, we break down why customers who shop through both your website and mobile app have significantly higher lifetime value and why moving customers to your app can become a powerful retention engine.

App revenue grew from just 7% to 22% in 9 months.

Learn:
• Why app users are more valuable than web-only customers
• How mobile apps improve retention and repeat purchases
• Why leading DTC brands are investing heavily in app installs
• How to build a stronger retention flywheel through mobile commerce

If you're an e-commerce founder, marketer, or DTC operator looking to increase LTV and drive sustainable growth, this is a strategy worth paying attention to.

Subscribe for more actionable insights on e-commerce growth, retention, customer acquisition, and mobile commerce.

06/09/2026

Most businesses don't find out about ADA compliance until they're already in a lawsuit.
And by then, it's expensive.

Website accessibility isn't optional anymore. It's a legal requirement. And the penalties for getting it wrong, whether it's an inaccessible website or an unsolicited SMS sent at the wrong hour, are steeper than most founders realize.

Ignorance of the law has never been a valid defense. In 2026, that applies to your digital presence too.

Full episode linked in bio.

What compliance gaps do you think most DTC brands are still sleeping on?

06/04/2026

Most DTC brands are obsessed with acquiring customers.

But Kiran Kotla says the real opportunity is understanding your best ones.

Your highest-value customers aren't just buying more. They're spending more per order, sticking around longer, and returning without reminders.

And here's the interesting part:

They're doing it through the app.

Not because of discounts.
Not because of loyalty points.
Because the app becomes the fastest path to what they already know they want.

In this clip from the Brewed Podcast, Kiran breaks down why your app isn't a growth hack—it's where customer loyalty shows up as behavior.

If you're building a DTC brand, this perspective could change how you think about retention, LTV, and mobile commerce.

🎧 Watch the full episode for more insights on customer behavior, retention, and why leading brands are investing in better mobile experiences.

He left Silicon Valley to solve the hardest problem in Indian ecommerce.Kiran Kotla was a senior engineer at two unicorn...
06/02/2026

He left Silicon Valley to solve the hardest problem in Indian ecommerce.

Kiran Kotla was a senior engineer at two unicorn startups companies acquired by Cisco and Marvell.

He could have kept building.

Instead, he came back to solve something nobody else was willing to touch:

Getting Indian products to the world. Reliably. Legally. At scale.

Customs bills that nobody warned you about.
Shipments stuck with no explanation.
Regulations that exist on paper but work differently in practice.
40 different regulatory regimes across 40 countries.

This is the infrastructure problem every Indian brand hits the moment they try to go global — and almost no one is solving it properly.

Kiran is.

In this episode of Brewed, we go deep on:
→ Why cross-border commerce is fundamentally broken
→ What "distance commerce" actually means as a category
→ Why your domestic playbook will fail internationally
→ The compliance mistakes that can kill your brand overnight
→ What the world is actually buying from India right now
→ How Dista is becoming the operating system for Indian brands going global

If you're building an Indian brand with global ambitions this is required listening.

Full conversation on YouTube. Link in comments.

🎙️ Brewed Podcast | Kiran Kotla, Co-Founder & CEO, Dista

06/01/2026

The goal wasn’t simply to launch another mobile app. It was to rebuild the mobile experience around how beauty customers actually discover, evaluate, and purchase products.

The outcome:

→ 70% higher conversion compared to mobile web
→ 33% higher AOV compared to mobile web
→ 36% of total DTC revenue now coming from the app

What stood out during the process was that the challenge wasn't traffic.

It was experience.

SUGAR’s customer journey is heavily driven by content, bundles, recommendations, and offers. But those experiences weren’t translating effectively into their previous app.

So together, we reimagined the mobile experience.

A dedicated Offers section replaced promotional clutter. Shoppable video became part of product discovery. Bundles, combos, and curated kits were given the visibility they deserved. And the entire growth stack integrated seamlessly without compromising performance.

The broader lesson for DTC brands is simple:

If discovery and merchandising drive purchase decisions in your category, your app cannot be a smaller version of your website.

It needs to be purpose-built for how customers actually buy.

A huge thank you to the SUGAR Cosmetics team for trusting us with this journey.

Full case study in the comments.

05/25/2026

China built a $300B cross-border DTC ecosystem.
India still hasn’t produced a truly dominant export-first consumer brand at global scale.

Why?

In the latest episode of Brewed by Appbrew, Kiran Kotla, Co-Founder and CEO of Dista, breaks down the structural challenges Indian brands face when expanding internationally:

→ fragmented regulations
→ weak cross-border playbooks
→ localization gaps
→ payment and checkout friction
→ pricing strategies that hurt conversion

But beneath all of this, there’s a much bigger shift happening.

More than 30% of Distacart’s customers today are non-Indian origin.

That changes the conversation completely.

Global consumers are becoming increasingly open to Indian brands, as long as the product solves a genuine problem and fits naturally into their lives.

Customers care less about geography than relevance.

And while many brands continue fighting for short-term attention on web channels, Dista saw app contribution grow from 7% to 22% in just 9 months.

Because long-term retention is rarely built on rented platforms alone.

It’s built through owned customer relationships.

This conversation is a deep dive into how Indian brands should think about global commerce, localization, retention, and mobile-first growth in the years ahead.

🎧 Brewed featuring Kiran Kotla, Co-Founder and CEO of . Dropping soon.

How does a beauty brand turn mobile into its highest-converting channel?Most people knowSUGAR Cosmetics Cosmetics from ...
05/22/2026

How does a beauty brand turn mobile into its highest-converting channel?

Most people knowSUGAR Cosmetics Cosmetics from

But the more interesting story is what they built behind the scenes.

Founded by Vineeta Singh and Kaushik Mukherjee in 2012, SUGAR became one of India’s earliest digital-first beauty brands. Today, the brand has 50,000+ retail touchpoints across the country and a mobile app that has become one of its strongest growth channels.

The numbers tell the story:
→ 70% higher conversion
→ 33% higher AOV
→ 36% of total DTC revenue coming from the app

While many brands spread their DTC growth across paid ads, email, and SMS, SUGAR built a mobile experience strong enough to become a major revenue driver on its own.

After experimenting with another platform, they returned to Appbrew to rebuild the experience with performance at the center.

We broke down the full journey in our latest case study.

Link in comments.

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