The total US retail e-commerce sales in 2024 stood at USD 1.19 trillion, up 8.1% vs 2023. Moreover, e-commerce accounted for 16.1% of total US retail sales in 2024 (vs 15.3% in 2023).

Additionally, about 63% of consumers had purchased directly from a brand’s website in 2023. This strengthens the business case for brands investing in direct relationships rather than treating marketplaces as the only growth lever.

Further, approximately 45% said more accurate sizing information would reduce returns, highlighting why direct-to-consumer (D2C) innovation must focus on outcomes.

As brands seek to capture more value from direct customer relationships, they are also working to reduce friction across the buying journey.

In response, startups are emerging with solutions that optimize D2C commerce, personalization, logistics, and returns.

  1. Covena (Indonesia): AI-powered Sales Agent
  2. Paapi (UK): Ad Optimization for D2C Companies
  3. Journey AI (Canada): AI-powered Sales App
  4. SwiftHub (Vietnam): e-Fulfillment Platform
  5. Datadrew AI (India): Growth Intelligence Platform
  6. Adomate (Belgium): Ad-as-a-Service Platform
  7. Stash (USA): D2C Platform for Games
  8. Ecomflow (Hong Kong): D2C Fulfillment Infrastructure
  9. Crivey (UAE): AI-based User Generated Ads Platform
  10. bluebarry (Netherlands): Product Quiz Funnel Software

 

 

Explore Emerging D2C Startups to Watch in 2026

1. Covena – AI-powered Sales Agent

  • Founding Year: 2025
  • Location: Indonesia

Indonesian startup Covena provides an AI sales agent to automate end-to-end B2C sales conversations across communication channels. It moves customers from first inquiry to booking or payment without human intervention.

The startup’s agent integrates with customer workflows and tools like calendars, CRMs, and payment gateways. It then uses AI models trained on a client’s sales scripts, objections, and tone to qualify leads.

The sales agent also answers detailed questions, and guides multi-step decisions with high response accuracy. It provides instant, consistent replies that follow standard operating procedures as well as shows live availability or offers details, triggers bookings or payment links, and syncs customer data into existing systems.

The platform also allows human agents to intervene when required in sensitive or edge cases. This reduces manual admin effort and increases lead-to-sale conversions and transaction value for consumer-facing businesses.

2. Paapi – Ad Optimization for D2C Companies

  • Founding Year: 2024
  • Location: London, UK
  • Funding: Raised EUR 420 000 in pre-seed funding

UK-based startup Paapi develops a privacy-first advertising optimization platform that measures and enhances cross-channel ad performance for marketers.

It connects ad platform APIs with user behavior and conversion tracking to map customer journeys, deduplicate conversions, and attribute true contribution across channels. The platform’s predictive AI recommends actions to optimize bidding and suppress wasteful spending.

The platform also improves campaign efficiency, while its proprietary architecture uses privacy-enhancing technologies, like Google’s Privacy Sandbox, to maintain compliance without relying on third-party cookies.

With its unified interface, Paapi delivers trusted attribution insights, reduces acquisition costs, and enables direct campaign activation. This allows marketers to make data-driven decisions and thrive in a privacy-first digital landscape.

3. Journey AI – AI-powered Sales App

  • Founding Year: 2023
  • Location: Ontario, Canada

Canadian startup Journey AI offers an AI-native sales application that deploys on DTC e-commerce storefronts and a standalone web app. It guides shoppers from product discovery to checkout in real time by connecting directly to store, behavioral, and transactional data.

The app utilizes a system of specialized AI agents for sales, recovery, retention, data, and trust to answer conversion-critical queries, surface relevant products, and streamline checkout across site, email, SMS, and WhatsApp.

The startup’s fast-loading, conversational interfaces and unified first-party data reduce friction at each funnel stage. It cuts cart abandonment and automates follow-ups as well as recovers high-intent drop-offs and drives repeat orders.

This way, the startup provides DTC brands with an autonomous conversion engine that lifts order volume and average order value – optimizing every interaction without adding operational complexity.

4. SwiftHub – e-Fulfillment Platform

  • Founding Year: 2023
  • Location: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Vietnamese startup SwiftHub provides an e-fulfillment platform. It connects e-commerce and DTC sales channels to technology-driven warehousing and last-mile delivery.

The platform integrates an order management system (OMS) and a warehouse management system (WMS) to sync orders across marketplaces like Shopify and local platforms.

The startup’s one-click integrations further enable real-time inventory communication, while automation rules, like smart warehouse routing, shipping method mapping, and address validation, process orders with high accuracy.

These features enable faster shipping, reduce warehouse costs, and increase picking efficiency for brands shipping more than 1000 orders per day. Consequently, this enables e-commerce and DTC brands in Vietnam to delegate fulfillment operations while lowering logistics and warehousing spending.

5. Datadrew AI – Growth Intelligence

  • Founding Year: 2023
  • Location: Gurugram, India

Indian startup Datadrew AI builds an AI-driven growth intelligence platform that ingests data from Shopify, Meta Ads, Google Ads, GA4 and other sources.

The platform produces unified, real-time analytics across the full e-commerce funnel. It also processes transaction, marketing, and behavioral data to compute customer lifetime value, cohort trends, product-level performance, and acquisition efficiency.

The platform’s conversational interface, Drew AI, further allows teams to query this data in natural language and receive instant visual insights and recommendations.

The startup offers modules for product intelligence, acquisition insights, retention insights, and creative strategy. It also integrates with tools like Klaviyo and Slack to support more than 1000 Shopify brands. This allows D2C leaders to replace manual reporting with precise, repeatable decision support.

 

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6. Adomate – Ad-as-a-Service Platform

  • Founding Year: 2024
  • Location: Ghent, Belgium

Belgian startup Adomate offers AI-enabled ad creative production for direct-to-consumer brands by combining automated data analysis with a subscription-based creative workflow.

The company’s solution connects to a customer’s website, Meta ad account, and brand guidelines, then utilizes campaign performance data and competitor trends to generate on-brand concepts.

The startup iterates on these creatives using weekly performance signals to refine formats, messages, and visuals. It then routes approved assets directly into Meta for launch and ongoing optimization.

As a result, the startup provides growing DTC teams with a continuous, data-driven ad pipeline that maintains brand consistency. This shortens creative turnaround to about one week and supports revenue growth through more frequent and structured creative testing.

7. Stash – D2C Platform for Games

  • Founding Year: 2023
  • Location: Los Angeles, CA, USA

US-based startup Stash builds a direct-to-consumer platform for game developers. It enables them to sell directly to players through customized webshops and in-game launchers.

The platform integrates with existing game infrastructures for developers to set up, test, and deploy D2C stores within their game engines and multiple platforms. It also features one-tap compliant checkout, loyalty programs, and incentive tools to increase conversion and player retention.

Moreover, the startup manages payment processing, tax compliance, and fraud protection in more than 100 countries, while offering local checkout experiences. Stash allows game studios to reduce platform fees and retain full control over player data.

8. Ecomflow – D2C Fulfillment from China

  • Founding Year: 2023
  • Location: Hong Kong

Hong Kong-based startup Ecomflow builds a direct-to-consumer fulfillment infrastructure that ships finished products from factories in China to customers in other countries.

The startup integrates with a brand’s manufacturing and e-commerce systems to receive inventory into strategically located warehouses near production. It then picks, packs, and dispatches orders on the same or next day after stock arrival.

The startup is supported by an in-house dashboard that tracks inventory levels, order status, and shipping performance in real time. It uses data-driven inventory tools to get low-stock alerts and reduce lead times.

These features enable brands to avoid overstock and stockouts while turning products into revenue immediately after production. It serves D2C brands that seek leaner supply chains.

9. Crivey – AI-based User Generated Ads

  • Founding Year: 2024
  • Location: Dubai Marina, UAE

UAE-based startup Crivey develops an AI-driven user-generated content (UGC) ads platform that produces performance-focused video creatives for D2C brands.

The platform combines text-to-video generation and an on-demand marketplace of over 200 verified creators. It takes in a product URL or brief and uses Crivey AI to research ideal customer profiles and generate funnel-wise ad scripts.

The platform then either converts those scripts directly into native, iPhone-style ad videos or routes them as structured briefs to human creators who deliver raw UGC assets. It further supports teams with features like auto script-to-video integration and hooks and visual guidance for creators.

Further, the platform provides a wallet-based credit system that standardizes pricing in its higher tiers. This enables brands and agencies to replace fragmented creator management and slow agency workflows with a single platform. It shortens creative turnaround and scales testing of ad variations.

10. bluebarry – Product Quiz Funnel Software

  • Founding Year: 2024
  • Location: Groningen, Netherlands

Dutch startup bluebarry provides AI-driven product quiz funnel software that converts large e-commerce catalogs into guided, conversational shopping flows for online shoppers. It generates landing pages, quizzes, and recommendation results from a store’s existing product data and URL input.

The software also ingests the merchant’s catalog and site structure, then uses AI to build on-brand landing pages, structured quiz questions, branching logic, and matching rules. It maps customer answers to specific products or collections.

This way, the software enables merchants to capture preference data, track completion and conversion metrics, and reuse quiz insights in personalization flows. These data points allow e-commerce brands to reduce choice overload and route visitors from an ad click to a tailored recommendation in a few steps.

Scope & Data

This D2C startup analysis is based on proprietary intelligence from the Discovery Platform, which monitors more than 9M+ global companies, 25K+ technologies and trends, and over 190M+ patents, publications, and market signals.

The analysis evaluates startups building D2C brands and enabling technologies across e-commerce infrastructure, personalization, fulfillment optimization, returns management, and customer data platforms.

Geographic clustering highlights key hubs such as Bangalore, New York City, Gurgaon, London, and Mumbai. These regions demonstrate strong digital commerce adoption, advanced logistics networks, and creator-led brand ecosystems that favor first-party data strategies over marketplace dependency.