The Attar Formulator The perfume brand has entered the retail segment and has around five outlets across India.

It was in 2014 when Adil Qadri had a direct-personal experience in entrepreneurship with e-commerce, when he began giving a helping hand at his uncle's furniture business as an ecommerce and SEO support. It was then that he decided to start his venture in 2015, "I was very much inspired by Snapdeal and Flipkart at that point in time to venture into an online business," shares Qadri.

But it wasn't rosy as one would expect. He tried his hands at multiple e-commerce businesses, such as women's apparel, electronics and t-shirts, but all went in vain. It was during that time that he learnt the power of digital marketing and, in March 2018, launched his D2C brand named Adilqadri Perfumes.

The perfume brand initially saw a few challenges in the form of order fulfilment and delivery speed since the business is based out of tier 3 town. They addressed and resolved the issue with Ship rocket's third-party fulfilment centre service. Qadri believes that future entrepreneurs should go by their instinct, "I am of the opinion that it doesn't take much time to launch a brand. One should go by instinct. Should not waste much time in taking the first step towards launching the brand. Don't delay your first move. Most of the D2C brands I know have started like this only."

Talking about how the brand is navigating its way among its competitors, he shares "The most critical and challenging aspect of a D2C brand is to generate sales orders/ revenue and customer retention. D2C Brands use Marketing strategies like running Google and FB Ads. My branding and marketing strategy is to keep it simple and original. Rather than investing in any celebrity endorsement, I as the founder of Adilqadri perfumes, kept myself as the face of the brand. I used to shoot simple and informative videos of myself talking about my luxury perfume brand and its features with the help of my in-house team and share it on Social Media platforms. This created that positioning in the minds of the customers that here is a simple common man trying to sell his perfume. So, people could relate to what I was trying to convey and immediately could relate to the brand AdilQadri perfumes."

In a world of increasing phenomenon of getting acquired by a House of Brands, he has no plans of making Adilqadri Perfumes part of any other big brand or corporate. "My motive behind starting the Adilqadri brand was not to sell it to Corporate or House of Brands. I started it as my child and nourished it. There are no plans of selling it as our intent was different; our intent was never to establish and sell it to others," he adds. The perfume brand has entered the retail segment and has around five outlets across India. Are there plans for FY23-24? To launch and establish its store in Dubai and to expand its retail outlets in India to 15.