Decoding India’s new-age consumer: Cashfree, Consumer Collective by Atrium to host The Consumer Circle in Gurugram

Indian consumers are no longer following a predictable path to purchase. A shopper can compare three products on price in the morning, discover a founder-led brand on Instagram in the afternoon, and pay a premium for it that evening because the brand feels relevant to them.

Discovery may happen through a reel, validation through a WhatsApp group, and purchase through quick commerce. The decision to buy again could then come down to something as simple as how quickly a refund reaches the customer.

For consumer brands, that means the product is only part of the equation. Understanding why consumers buy, what they value, and what makes them return has become a more complicated part of building a business.

That is the conversation Cashfree and Consumer Collective by Atrium want to bring into the room through The Consumer Circle, a full-day, invite-only gathering in Gurugram on September 20. The event will bring together founders, operators, and investors building and backing consumer brands in India for four sessions focused on the questions shaping the next phase of D2C growth.

When useful conversations happen behind closed doors

The consumer industry has no shortage of public conversations about growth. But some of the most useful lessons tend to be shared privately.

Founders may talk publicly about GMV, launches, and fundraising. But the conversations between peers can look very different. They are about what remains after discounts, returns, shipping, and marketing; what a new channel actually costs once platform economics and advertising are included; what happens to conversion when discounts stop, and how to find investors who can contribute more than capital.

The Consumer Circle is built around creating a setting where those conversations can happen. Nothing said inside the sessions will be attributed outside the room, allowing participants to discuss the decisions, challenges, and numbers behind their businesses more openly.

The consumer is changing faster than the playbook

The need for these conversations comes as consumer behavior itself changes. Deloitte India’s January 2026 fashion report found that additional consumer spending is going toward upgrading essentials and improving quality rather than simply increasing the number of products purchased. For consumer brands, that makes understanding perceived value critical.

Premiumization is also spreading beyond India’s largest cities, with Tier II and Tier III consumers becoming meaningful contributors to premium demand. This is changing how brands think about assortment, pricing, and communication. Meanwhile, Gen Z is bringing different expectations around culture, identity, and inclusion. A brand increasingly needs to mean something to its customer beyond the product inside the box.

For founders, the challenge is to understand these shifts while continuing to build a business that can scale.

Four sessions on building what comes next

The Consumer Circle will explore these questions across four sessions, beginning with breakfast and continuing through lunch before closing with hi-tea and networking at 3:30 pm.

D2C Veterans will look at the journey from idea to growth to scale, including the decisions and challenges that emerge at each stage.

AI Unlock for D2C will focus on where AI is creating a genuine advantage for consumer teams and where it is simply adding another layer of noise. The session will look at what teams are using and shipping, with industry experts joining the conversation.

The Growth Playbook will examine the strategies, shifts, and lessons behind high-speed growth and what consumer brands need to rethink as the market becomes more competitive.

Fundraising Maze will take a different approach to the traditional investor panel. Investors from Consumer Collective by Atrium, Fireside Ventures,  Hyperscale Ventures, and Recur Club will lead rapid-fire breakout groups on what they are looking for in consumer businesses and the early signals that can make a brand stand out.

Bringing consumer experience into the room

The gathering will include Hitaysh Dhingraa, Co-founder and CEO, Puresta | The Man Company; Mohit Sadaani, Angel Investor and Co-founder, The Moms Co; Gaurav Khatri, Co-Founder and CEO, Noise; Niharika Joshi, Co-founder and CMO, Cumin Co; Bharanidharan Viswanathan, Co-founder and CEO, The Crux; and Aakriti Rawal, Founder, House of Chikankaari, alongside more founders and operators from the consumer ecosystem.

The problems behind the numbers

For Cashfree, the conversations also reflect challenges it sees while working with consumer and D2C businesses. A brand can spend heavily to acquire a customer and still lose that customer at checkout through payment failures, retries, or a cumbersome payment experience. Sale and festive periods create another challenge, with sudden traffic spikes exposing problems that may not appear during an ordinary week.

Moving customers from cash on delivery to prepaid payments can affect working capital and return-to-origin costs. Refund speed can also influence whether a customer chooses to buy from the brand again. 

“Working closely with consumer brands, we’ve been seeing that it is harder to create differentiation and ensure scale. As consumer behavior continues to shift, change, and evolve, it's important to understand little nuances that bridge the gap between a casual consumer and a brand loyalist,” said Akash Sinha, Co-Founder and CEO, Cashfree.

“Over the last decade, we have been up close with merchants, understanding their key pain points and creating avenues to help them rise. This is one such avenue, and we are looking forward to meeting many bright folks shaping the next era of the D2C ecosystem,” he added.  

Cashfree has served more than 1 million businesses since its inception, including D2C brands, giving the company a view into the payment and operational challenges businesses face as they scale.

Consumer Collective by Atrium comes to the conversation from the operating side. Founded in 2025 by Atrium VC along with 40+ founders and operators, including founders from The Man Company, Noise, Wakefit, and mCaffeine, the Collective backs consumer founders at the -1 to 1 stage.

“Consumer Collective by Atrium was built on a simple belief: founders shouldn’t have to learn every lesson the hard way,” said Nikita Dhingra, Founding Partner, Consumer Collective by Atrium. “The people who have built and scaled consumer brands carry years of hard-earned operating experience, from hiring and distribution to product and growth. Consumer Circle is an extension of that philosophy, bringing this lived experience to a much broader community of founders and helping the ecosystem learn from those who have built before them.”

For both organizations, the reason to convene the Circle is the same: the ecosystem compounds when the people building in it are willing to say the specifics out loud. The value on offer is access, while tactical sales conversations stay outside the sessions.

Making experience more accessible

The Consumer Circle is ultimately about giving founders access to experience that they may otherwise spend years acquiring themselves. A founder could arrive with a question about margins, distribution, growth, or fundraising and leave with a perspective from someone who has dealt with the same problem. An investor can hear what founders are working through before those lessons become polished into a pitch deck.

The value of a small room is that the conversation can continue beyond the day itself. Entry is invite-only and subject to review, with Sign Up Link available for those interested in attending.