Scroll through any D2C category in India right now and you’ll see the same playbook: a pastel gradient, the same two Google Fonts, the same UGC-style product photography. It’s not that founders lack taste — it’s that most “branding” is actually just visual styling applied after the business model is already set.
Real differentiation starts earlier: with a positioning decision about who you’re for and who you’re deliberately not for. Everything else — color, type, photography — should be a consequence of that decision, not a substitute for it.
The brands breaking out of the sameness right now aren’t the ones with the boldest color palette; they’re the ones whose positioning is specific enough that the visual identity had no choice but to look different.
