Brands
Mutterfly partners Zoomcar to enhance rental marketplace offerings
MUMBAI: India’s only rental marketplace for lifestyle products, Mutterfly, has partnered with Zoomcar wherein all those who use the Zoomcar app can now rent products for their trips hassle-free and enhance their travel experience.
Through this tie up, all of Mutterfly products ranging from cameras to tents will be readily accessible for all Zoomcar customers. Mutterfly will also enable its customers to subscribe to cars through Zoomcar’s ZAP subscribe program.
Zoomcar will offer Mutterfly customers an added advantage by offering them Rs 10,000 cashback on their first month subscription period on Zap Subscribe.
Mutterfly CEO Akshay Bhatia says, “Both Zoomcar and Mutterfly have a common vision at helping users owning less and experiencing more. We are excited about this tie-up and I believe this is a great value-add for the rental ecosystem. We are happy to offer Zoomcar customers all that they need to enhance their travel experience and build memories.”
Kaushal Desai from Zoomcar adds, “We found an ideal fit with Mutterfly enabling us to enhance our client offerings. Now you can log on to Zoomcar app and book not just your next vehicle but also all your needs for the travel. In addition, we are happy to offer a 10,000 cashback to all Mutterfly users who enrol on our newly introduced Zap Subscribe program. We look forward to this mutually benefiting partnership.”
Mutterfly is a rental marketplace for aspirational products which also offers an easy access to a luxurious lifestyle. Their services let you rent high-end equipment like DSLRs, Playstations, hover-boards and more at affordable prices. It has created a sharing network through technology which allows people (customers) to earn anything between Rs 5,000 to 30,000 per month.
Mutterfly came into existence when ex-Morgan Stanley banker, Akshay Bhatia, began building a food-sharing platform and in the process discovered a larger market that allowed people to experience without buying. The platform launched in 2017 and has gathered over 70,000 registered users across its Mobile and web platforms. With a 15 per cent month on month growth, Mutterfly is targeting a $2 billion market that has largely remained fragmented and untapped. This evangelising equipment rental company is all set to "Say Bye to Buy”.
Brands
E-commerce growth rises, but profits come under pressure
Shop Culture flags rising costs, weak systems and a $5.38 billion quick-commerce boom reshaping global retail
MUMBAI: E-commerce is booming, but profits are thinning. A new report by Shop Culture warns that brands clinging to outdated, growth-at-all-costs strategies are being outpaced in a costlier, more complex 2025 landscape.
Global online retail is expected to cross $6.86 trillion this year, with 2.77 billion shoppers making at least one purchase. Yet returns are under strain: average return on ad spend has slipped to 2.87:1, exposing cracks in how brands chase scale without building sustainable margins.
Three shifts are rewriting the rules. First, retail media is getting pricier, with Amazon’s average cost per click rising 15.5 per cent year-on-year to $1.12. Second, while 77 per cent of e-commerce professionals now use AI daily, many see limited gains as weak systems blunt its impact. Third, geography is no longer expansion, it is strategy. The share of Shop Culture clients operating across multiple markets has more than doubled, from 30 per cent in 2024 to 65 per cent in 2025.
Subarna Mukherjee, founder and ceo, Shop Culture, is blunt: “The e-commerce industry has a nostalgia problem. In 2022, the playbook was simple: list aggressively, spend on ads, and ride the wave of post-pandemic digital adoption. It worked. Revenue grew rapidly. But by 2025, the industry is seeing the consequences of those structural shortcuts. E-commerce itself is not slowing down, the challenge lies in how brands are operating within it.”
Nowhere is the shift sharper than in India’s quick-commerce boom. The segment is set to hit $5.38 billion in 2025, growing 17 per cent and emerging as the fastest-growing globally. What began as a convenience play is fast becoming a margin buffer. In one case, quick commerce drove 70 per cent of a packaged food brand’s online revenue, delivering 130 per cent year-on-year growth. A beauty brand, meanwhile, saw selling prices rise 25 per cent higher than on traditional marketplaces.
Expansion, too, is being rethought. The report argues that brands chasing the largest markets first often stumble. Better outcomes come from sequencing entries based on efficiency, regulatory readiness and competition, with markets such as the UK and Germany offering smarter entry points than the United States.
Compliance has turned from a checkbox into a revenue lever, especially in Europe. Brands with ready frameworks can go live in 8 to 12 weeks, while others risk delays of six months or more due to listing and documentation hurdles.
AI, for all the hype, is no silver bullet. Across more than 1,500 listings, it improved conversion rates by 10 to 15 per cent, cut TACOS by 7 to 10 per cent and reduced stockouts by 20 per cent, but only when layered on strong foundations. As Mukherjee puts it: “AI is not a growth strategy, it is an amplifier. It enhances strong systems and exposes weak ones.”
The message for 2026 is stark. Growth alone will not save brands. Margins, discipline and smarter strategy will. In a market still expanding at breakneck speed, the real race is no longer for scale, it is for survival.
