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We asked ChatGPT about 25 Indian D2C brands. 16 were invisible.

Indian D2C brands collectively mastered Instagram, performance marketing, and influencer seeding. Most raised significant capital and built genuine consumer awareness. Yet when shoppers ask AI "which Indian skincare brand is best for oily skin?" or "best wireless earphones under ₹3,000 from an Indian brand?", our study found that 16 of 25 leading D2C brands were completely absent. The playbook that built the business didn't build AI presence.

How we tested

We selected 25 brands spanning electronics/audio, personal care/beauty, and lifestyle/apparel — including boAt, Noise, Mamaearth, Sugar Cosmetics, Plum Goodness, WOW Skin Science, mCaffeine, Pilgrim, Minimalist, Lenskart, The Man Company, Bombay Shaving Company, Beardo, MyGlamm, Wakefit, Sleepyhead, XYXX, Rare Rabbit, DaMENSCH, Snitch, The Bear House, Nua Woman, The Souled Store, The Pant Project, and Bunaai.

We ran three prompt types across ChatGPT (GPT-4o), Gemini Advanced, and Perplexity:

• Shopping prompts — "best Indian skincare brand for oily skin", "which Indian D2C audio brand makes the best TWS earphones under ₹3,000?", "affordable Indian men's grooming brand recommendations"
• Direct prompts — "what does [brand] sell?", "is [brand] cruelty-free / sustainable / dermatologist-tested?"
• Comparison prompts — "[brand A] vs [brand B] for [product category] — which is better value?"

What we found

• 16 of 25 brands never appeared in any shopping recommendation query — despite several having millions of Instagram followers and hundreds of thousands of customer reviews on Nykaa and Amazon.
• Of the 9 that did appear, 7 had material errors — the highest error rate of any sector in our study series. Wrong product claims, outdated ingredient lists, discontinued product lines still described as current, and funding status errors (acquired brands described as independent, or vice versa) were the most common issues.
• Only 2 of 25 were both consistently recommended and accurately described — an 8% pass rate in a category where brand loyalty decisions are made by millions of consumers every day.
• AI engines strongly favoured brands with Wikipedia entries, independent editorial coverage in mainstream publications, and clinical/dermatological references — not brands with Instagram reach or influencer seeding.

What the invisible 16 had in common

1. Influencer content doesn't feed AI training. A million-view Instagram Reel about a brand's vitamin C serum creates social reach — but it's not indexed in the sources AI engines use for product recommendation. The entire influencer-seeding playbook, which defined Indian D2C brand building from 2018 to 2024, contributes nothing to AI visibility.
2. Nykaa and Amazon reviews aren't citable by AI in the way editorial coverage is. Customer reviews on marketplaces represent enormous social proof — but AI engines don't attribute those to the brand in recommendation queries. A brand with 10,000 five-star reviews is invisible if it has no independent editorial coverage explaining what it does and why it works.
3. No owned clinical or ingredient content in citable form. The D2C brands with AI visibility had published independent ingredient explainers, dermatologist quotes in editorial contexts, or clinical study references — content that AI could cite as an authority signal. Most D2C brands' product claims live in marketing copy that AI can't distinguish from advertising.
4. Funding round press coverage has a short AI half-life. A Series B announcement drives press coverage for a week. That coverage fades from AI relevance quickly if nothing authoritative replaces it. Brands that only generate funding-round press have thin, dated AI profiles.

What to do about it

D2C brands need to build an AI entity layer on top of their social layer: independent editorial coverage that attributes claims to the brand, clinical or ingredient content in crawlable formats, Wikipedia presence, and citable product differentiation. None of this requires abandoning what's working in performance — it's a parallel investment. Full GEO playbook in our Complete GEO Guide.