Bain & Company collectively with $7.5B+ revenue in FY25

BENGALURU | June 2026: 

Insurgent consumer brands have evolved from niche challengers into a significant force within India's consumer landscape highlights Bain & Company’s and DSG Consumer Partners’ fourth edition of the Insurgent Brands Playbook titled “Game Changers 2026: India Insurgent Brand Report”.

Analyzing 240+ insurgent brands (founded after 2007 and have raised at least $3 million in funding) across sectors, the study estimates that the ecosystem generated $7.5 billion in revenue in FY25, compared with $2 billion in FY20. Over the last five years, these brands have consistently outpaced their respective markets growing 3.3 times, increasingly reshaping multiple consumer categories by identifying underserved needs, building new consumption occasions, accelerating adoption of emerging formats and expanding previously niche segments into meaningful markets.

Opportunity for insurgency exists across consumer categories, with disruption occurring at different rates across sectors. Insurgent brands have continued to materially outpace incumbents over the last five years. Jewellery insurgents have grown nearly 6.5x, followed by beauty and personal care at 6x, and home & kitchen as well as electric wearables and devices at 4.5-5x, highlighting the significant headroom for disruption across the consumer landscape.

Rohit Shankar, Partner, Bain & Company, said, “Indian insurgent brands have fundamentally changed how consumer categories are built and scaled in India. They are winning by focusing on emerging or latent consumer needs, building mastery in media and channel deployment, and high velocity innovation. These capabilities have enabled insurgents not only to disrupt established categories and take share from incumbents, but also to create entirely new growth pools”

Bain’s global research found ~85% of companies that fail to grow cite internal barriers, rather than the market, as the primary constraint. For insurgent brands, this is the central challenge of scaling: growth brings complexity, slows decision making, and can weaken the Founder’s Mentality that gave them their edge in the first place.