Brands
Havmor flies high this Uttarayan with a folk-powered festive campaign
NATIONAL: Havmor Ice Cream has rolled out a culture-first Uttarayan campaign, pairing a high-energy folk anthem with festival-specific value packs as it looks to own Gujarat’s most visible kite-flying season.
The centrepiece is a specially produced Uttarayan song featuring Gujarati folk star Kirtidan Gadhvi, built around the familiar “Kai Po Che” refrain and designed to play out across rooftops, terraces and family gatherings. The track positions Havmor not just as a dessert brand, but as part of the festive soundtrack.
“Havmor has always been about the moments we share with loved ones,” said Havmor Ice Cream head of marketing Rishabh Verma. “With Uttarayan 2026, we are embedding ourselves into one of Gujarat’s most cherished traditions through an authentic cultural collaboration.”
To convert buzz into baskets, Havmor has also launched festival combo packs. These include choco brownie at Rs 129 (down from Rs 155) and butterscotch at Rs 99 (from Rs 125) in 700 ml packs. The brand is also pushing its zulubarrange at Rs 160 for a three plus one offer, including zulubar dark crunch, to drive volume during the peak season.
The push comes as parent Lotte India Corporation ramps up capacity, having recently commissioned a Rs 500 crore ice-cream plant in Pune, one of the largest in the country, to fuel Havmor’s national expansion.
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 A new report by Shop Culture warns that brands clinging to outdated, growth-at-all-costs strategies are being outpaced in a costlier, more complex 2025 landscape.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.
