Case Study · Fashion / Apparel
RTO cut from 38% to 19% — unlocking ₹1.6Cr/month in trapped margin.
Fashion Brand (mid-market ethnic wear) · 5 months
Business Overview
Ethnic-wear D2C brand doing ₹3.5Cr/month. Meta scale was strong but cash flow was strangled by 38% RTO. Every order was 62% of a real order.
Problem
RTO was treated as a logistics problem. It was actually a full-funnel psychology, ops and product problem.
Diagnosis
We mapped RTO drivers: 41% address quality issues, 22% delayed shipping, 19% cash-on-delivery buyer's remorse, 12% product expectation mismatch, 6% other.
Strategy
- 01Deploy Anti-RTO Engine™
- 02COD-to-prepaid nudges & incentives
- 03Address verification via WhatsApp
- 04Delivery-day expectation communication
- 05PDP expectation engineering (size, fit, video)
Execution
- • Week 1–4: SOP rollout, WhatsApp confirmation flow
- • Week 5–8: Prepaid incentive engine, delivery ETAs
- • Week 9–12: PDP re-engineering
- • Week 13–20: Ongoing optimization + monitoring
Metrics
RTO Rate
38%19%-19pp
Prepaid Share
22%61%+39pp
Net Revenue
₹3.5Cr₹5.1Cr+46%
Cash Cycle
38 days11 days-71%
Contribution Margin
9%21%+12pp
Key learnings
RTO is not a shipping problem. It's a trust problem you engineer out of the funnel.
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