From 10 retailers to a tracked network, and ₹80–220 Cr growth in 18 months

The manufacturer sold through wholesalers who each also carried a competing brand, and roughly ten retailers it had no direct relationship with, no names, no order history. Stock left the factory and vanished into a black box, no signal whether it sold in three days or three months, no way to tell a demand dip from a wholesaler quietly diverting volume.

With only ten retailers, there wasn't yet a network worth disintermediating, so we made it worth a wholesaler's time to tell the truth: a 1% margin incentive for reporting real sell-through. Once that reporting existed, we went after depth, new distributors in untapped geographies, subsidized first orders for retailers routed through the wholesaler, and bundled the trusted legacy line with the unproven PVC line in every sell-in.

The incentive held because it was cheaper to comply than to cheat: a wholesaler hiding volume was giving up a real 1% for a workaround that could unravel on the next retailer stockout. The subsidy for new orders only released on clean reporting, so the two mechanisms were fused. Eighteen months in, reporting stopped being an ask and became the shape of the order process.