Shaka Harry – India
Impact at a Glance
3.8–4× ROAS | 2× CTR on Top SKUs | +30 % Add-to-Cart Rate | Reduced Wasted Spend by ~18 %
Starting Point & Business Context
Shaka Harry is one of India’s fastest-growing plant-based snack brands, available on Swiggy Instamart, Blinkit, and other Q-commerce platforms.
When I began consulting, marketplace efficiency was limited by generic campaigns and inconsistent PDP quality. The average ROAS was 0.85 on Instamart and 0.9 to 1.1 on Blinkit, with several high-potential SKUs under-delivering due to weak visibility and low PDP engagement.
The goal was to lift ROAS to at least 2× and scale revenue profitably across cities and SKUs.
Designing the Q-Commerce Growth Engine
Quick commerce is a precision game. The winning formula lies in data depth, SKU focus, and operational alignment.
To identify the most scalable paths, I analysed eight months of sales and marketing data across 10 plus cities, building a performance matrix that mapped SKU efficiency by city, discount level, and placement visibility.
This matrix shaped a three-layer growth system:
- Visibility Optimisation: Strengthen PDP SEO, keywords, and creative hooks to lift add-to-cart rates.
- Discount Intelligence: Calibrate discount thresholds by SKU affinity and weekend demand patterns.
- City Focus & Category Fit: Prioritise high-conversion city-SKU pairs and reallocate spend toward proven winners.
A competitive benchmarking study of leading plant-based brands (Blue Tribe, Greenest, PFC, Tata Simply Better, and Good Dot) highlighted gaps in keyword density and visual hierarchy. These insights guided a complete overhaul of product listings and creative strategy.
From Insight to Execution
Product & Listing Optimisation
- Every marketplace listing was treated as a digital storefront.
- Redesigned product display pages across Instamart and Blinkit, improving titles, descriptions, imagery, and product sequencing.
- The focus was to communicate taste, protein, and guilt-free snacking in one glance.
- This resulted in an add-to-cart rate improvement of 28 percent within the first six weeks.
Campaign Re-Architecture
The existing setup was a single campaign per ad type tagged with all products across every city, which blurred data and diluted performance signals.
I restructured this into a modular campaign system:
- Single-SKU campaigns for top sellers and new hero products.
- Multi-SKU campaigns for similar items (nuggets, samosas, momos).
- Best-seller groups with shared creative and discount logic.
On Instamart, I leveraged Keyword Banner Ads, Item Boost Ads, and Last-Minute Add-On Ads.
On Blinkit, the focus was on Product Booster Ads, Sponsored Listings, and Category Page Displays.
This re-architecture increased CTR by 2× and created cleaner visibility data for scaling decisions.
Strategic Insights That Drove Scale
Data analysis revealed strong city-SKU affinities, the key missing lever for scale.
High-protein samosas and hot & spicy nuggets over-indexed in Mumbai and Bengaluru, while Tier 2 cities leaned toward parathas and ready-to-cook keema mattar.
Budgets were recalibrated: 65 percent to top-performing campaigns, 25 percent to growth-stage SKUs, and 10 percent to Tier 2 testing.
Working with operations and logistics, we resolved dark-store stockouts on Instamart to keep PDPs consistently available.
The outcome was a smoother full-funnel experience from product view to purchase and a sustained improvement in conversion efficiency.
Results That Redefined Efficiency
Performance gains were consistent and logical across the funnel:
- ROAS rose from ~1 to 3.8–4×, sustained for multiple months.
- CTR 2× and add-to-cart +30 percent lifted total funnel throughput.
- Revenue grew ~3.8–4.5× at near-steady ad spend.
- Weekend promotions (Friday to Sunday) expanded sales mix from 35 percent to 60 percent.
- Budget wastage reduced ~18 percent, improving profitability across marketplaces.
The brand’s Q-commerce channels evolved from experimental pilots into a predictable, high-return growth engine.
Beyond the Metrics
A key part of this engagement was future-proofing.
I implemented a data pipeline to track D2C and marketplace events, connecting Q-commerce performance insights with Shaka Harry’s owned digital channels (website).
This created a feedback loop for future campaigns, pricing decisions, and new product rollouts.
In parallel, a lightweight competitive tracker now monitors SKU visibility and share-of-search against major plant-based competitors, helping the brand retain marketplace edge.
What I Learned as a Growth Consultant
“In quick commerce, precision beats presence. Every SKU, keyword, and image is a profit lever if you know how to read the signals.”
SKU-Level Thinking: Treat each product as its own P&L; not all products deserve equal spend.
Operational Collaboration: Marketing impact is capped by stock reliability. Partnering with operations unlocked hidden efficiency.
Frameworks over Tactics: Sustainable success comes from repeatable systems, not one-off campaigns.
Let’s Build Your Growth System
If you are scaling a brand on Instamart, Blinkit, or Zepto and want to move from volume to profitability, let’s design your growth system.