Frontier, India’s first D2C AI Summit, concluded today at Radisson, Udyog Vihar, bringing together 150+ D2C founders and CXOs, 25+ AI leaders, 100+ brands for a 12-hour day built around a single question: what is AI actually changing inside a consumer business?
Curated by D2C Insider, the summit was themed AI-Native D2C: The Next Growth Curve. Its premise was deliberately narrow. The internet changed how consumer brands reached buyers, marketplaces changed how products were discovered, and social commerce rewrote acquisition. AI is now rewriting all three at once, along with retention, operations and unit economics. Frontier was designed around what that does to a P&L rather than what it does to a keynote.
The format alternated deliberately throughout the day: four hands-on AI bootcamps and four operator panels running from morning to evening, a fireside to open the afternoon, and dinner and drinks to close.
The morning opened with a workshop by Pradeep Sekhar, India CEO of Base.com, on deploying AI agents to monitor real-time omnichannel profitability. It was followed by Panel 1, The AI-Native Consumer: How AI Is Rewriting Discovery, Conversation & Conversion, moderated by Snehil Khanor, Co-Founder and CEO of TrulyMadly, and featuring Ojasvi Bhatia, Lead AI Partnerships, India at Meta; Apurva Mudgal from Product at WhatsApp; Ayushi Gudwani, Founder and CEO of FableStreet; Vaibhav Makhija, Founder and CEO of What’s Up Wellness; Aditya Singh, Co-Founder of All In Capital; and Sahil Jindal, MD of the Jindal Group. Anindita Saha, Media Director at Hustle AI, then led a workshop on how D2C brands take control of outcomes with AI.
The pre-lunch session turned to infrastructure. Panel 2, The AI Stack: Infrastructure, Agents & the New Enterprise, was moderated by Sachin Uppal, Co-Founder of Vriksha.ai, and brought together Ayush Agrawal, Solutions Architect at AWS; Monalisa Sahu, VP of Online and Digital Natives at Gnani.ai; Akash Agrawalla, Founder of ZOFF; Payal Punjabi, Head of Partnership at GoKwik; Aankith Aroraa, Co-Founder and CEO of 3TENX; and Pradeep Sekhar.
“Most founders we speak to have already tried AI somewhere in the business. A chatbot here, a creative tool there. Only a few have made it structural,” said Abhishek Shah, Chief Evangelist, D2C Insider. “Frontier existed to close that gap in one day, because the brands that make AI structural over the next twelve months are the ones that will set the pricing, the margins and the pace for everyone else.”
The afternoon opened with a fireside chat hosted by Shah, featuring Gaurav Mangla, CEO of fastrr by Shiprocket, and Nitin Agarwal, former CEO of GlobalBees. Kunal Kumar, Director of Revenue at Fynd, followed with a workshop on autonomous AI. Panel 3, From Automation to Operating Leverage: Where AI Actually Moves the Needle, was moderated by Ajay Rao, Founder and CEO of Emiza, with Satyajeet Singh, VP Product at PayU; Saahil Nayar, Business Head and Senior Vice President at Honasa Consumer Ltd.; Niranjan Nakhate, Founder of Futwork; Rahul Vishwakarma, Co-Founder of Crest; Nitin Yadav, Founder and CEO of GemPundit; and Rajat Khullar, Founder of Bla Bli Blu.
The final stretch paired a growth flywheel workshop led by Manuj Mundra, VP of Product at fastrr by Shiprocket, with Panel 4, The AI-Native Business: What Does It Take to Build, Fund & Scale?, moderated by Rohit Anand, Chief Revenue Officer at GetVantage. The panel featured Abhishek Srivastava, Managing Partner for Startup Banking at IDFC FIRST Bank; Anshul Gupta, Co-Founder of TrueAlpha VC; Urmit Shah, Growth and Investments at DSG Consumer Partners and Alok Paul, COO of Littlebox India.
Running alongside the sessions were an AI Experience Zone, speed networking, and curated founder introductions matched by stage, category and growth ambition. Drawn from a community of 30,000+ D2C founders and operators, the room moved between discovering how AI is reshaping consumer businesses, exchanging ideas, and opening conversations that turn into collaborations. Frontier was co-presented by fastrr by Shiprocket and IDFC FIRST Bank. Supporting partners included GetVantage, Emiza, Fynd, Base.com, Blink and Hustle.