India's retail landscape is undergoing a seismic shift. With the post-pandemic resurgence, the rules of the game have changed—digitally powered, customer-centric, and hyper-connected experiences are now at the core of brand strategies. In this evolving narrative, new-age players like ace turtle, TMRW (an Aditya Birla Group venture), and HomeLane are not just navigating the change but shaping it through innovation, agility, and a deep understanding of their consumers.

From fashion to home interiors, these companies are blending technology with category expertise, decentralizing power structures, and evolving into omnichannel machines. Here we delve into how Nitin Chhabra, CEO, ace turtle; Prashant Sharma, CMO & Business Head, TMRW; and Subodh Jain,SVP, Growth & Category, HomeLane are driving this transformation.

Ace Turtle: From SaaS to Scaling Brands

“We don’t have a sales team, and that’s by design.” Nitin Chhabra’s said defining the contrarian DNA of ace turtle. Initially a SaaS company, ace turtle pivoted post-pandemic to become a brand operator by acquiring and scaling businesses of its own clients. Today, ace turtle runs brands like Lee and Wrangler in India, but not in the traditional retail way.

Their model is simple yet sophisticated: brand-specific teams handle marketing, retail identity, customer experience, and product—while the backbone functions like technology, supply chain, projects, and finance remain shared and centralized. This hybrid structure enables scalability with efficiency.

“We realized that commerce was just one part of the challenge,” Chhabra explained. “There were two big black boxes—a brick-and-mortar front-end and supply chain backend. Both lacked data visibility.” To solve the retail front-end, ace turtle built AI-enabled in-store technology. Cameras capture customer journeys. Sensors on products and trial rooms track movement and conversion. This real-time data flow allows them to replicate online customer behavior insights in physical stores.

“If a product goes from the shelf to the trial room but doesn’t reach the billing counter, we know there’s a problem—either in fit, design, or pricing,” Chhabra stated. “That’s powerful intelligence.”

At the operational core lies Connect, their proprietary app. It digitizes visual merchandising, training, order management, and every retail workflow imaginable. With 1.2 million API calls daily across in-house and third-party platforms, ace turtle’s infrastructure allows them to launch and scale brands quickly—sometimes with just 11 to 14 people per brand.

Yet, tech isn’t one-size-fits-all. “This model worked brilliantly for fashion, but not for toys,” admitted Chhabra. “The learnings are category-specific, and that’s something we’re adapting to now.”

TMRW: Building India’s House of Digital-First Brands

While ace turtle’s journey began with SaaS, TMRW was born from an ambition to build a new kind of brand house for the digital-native Indian consumer. Backed by the Aditya Birla Group, TMRW’s mission is clear—consolidate online-first fashion and lifestyle brands and scale them through an omnichannel strategy.

“While our parent company dominates traditional offline retail, we saw a massive opportunity in the fast-evolving digital-first segment,” said Prashant Sharma, CMO & Business Head, TMRW. “Young India is shopping online, and we wanted to build a portfolio that spoke their language.”

TMRW now owns or partners with eight brands, including Bewakoof, one of India’s original D2C disruptors. The approach, however, is not just about acquiring brands—it’s about building operating systems that fuel sustainable growth. “We started online, but now we’re present wherever the customer is—our journey is omnichannel by necessity, not by buzzword,” highlighted Sharma. “From D2C websites to marketplaces, offline stores, and even quick commerce, we follow the customer, not the channel.”

A standout feature of TMRW’s strategy is its centralized technology stack. The largest team in the company is tech. A proprietary backend runs analytics, demand forecasting, supply chain, and CRM across all brands. At the same time, functions like design and merchandising remain decentralized. “These require category-specific agility. So, we empower individual brand teams to run fast and stay relevant,” Sharma shared.

What’s more, learnings from one brand feed into others. “Once we crack a playbook in one brand, it's very easy to replicate. That’s the beauty of being a portfolio operator,” he added.

TMRW’s collaboration with Aditya Birla Fashion brings mutual benefits—while the legacy business shares deep offline experience, TMRW contributes innovation and digital speed. “It’s a two-way street. We’re helping each other evolve,” Sharma affirmed.

HomeLane: Organizing India's Home Interior Chaos

The home interiors segment has long been fragmented, unorganized, and unreliable. Bengaluru-based HomeLane is changing that through a balanced mix of tech innovation and strategic acquisitions.

“From day one, our mission has been to deliver a seamless, trustworthy interior experience,” asserted Subodh Jain, SVP - Growth & Category, HomeLane. “To do this, we’ve grown both organically—by expanding geographically and through franchise partners—and inorganically, by acquiring tech companies and complementary brands.”

The most significant of these was its acquisition of Design Cafe, a brand with a similar mission and model. “It was a natural fit,” Jain explained. “Both of us were solving the same problem—how to bring structure to a chaotic industry.”

But M&A comes with challenges—especially in integration. HomeLane approached it with clarity and respect. “We were very transparent internally: the mission remains the same. That unified the teams,” Jain shared.

Another cornerstone of the integration was deal structuring. “We avoided large cash deals. Most of our acquisitions were equity-based. That way, everyone has skin in the game—whether you’re acquiring or being acquired,” he said.

And then there’s technology. HomeLane has invested in 3D visualization, digital workflows, and design-to-delivery tools. “Our proprietary 3D rendering tech allows customers to see their future homes in photorealistic detail before a single brick is laid,” Jain stated. “That level of immersion builds trust.”

With expansion into Tier II cities like Siliguri, Tirupati, and Jamshedpur, HomeLane is betting on India’s growing aspirations beyond metros. “These are not fringe markets anymore—they are rising fast, and we’re going to be there,” Jain declared.

The Convergence of Tech, Teams, and Customer Experience

Across these diverse categories—fashion, lifestyle, and interiors—a few key themes emerge:

Tech is not a function, it’s the foundation - All three companies see technology as core to operations, not a support pillar. From ace turtle’s Connect to TMRW’s tech stack and HomeLane’s 3D engines, digital tools are deeply embedded in every layer of the business.

Omnichannel is now table stakes - Customers today demand seamless experiences across online and offline. Whether it’s browsing online and buying offline or vice versa, the customer sees one brand—not multiple channels.

Decentralization breeds agility - While core systems like finance, tech, and data are centralized for efficiency, functions that require creativity and speed—like design or merchandising—are decentralized. This hybrid model enables both control and freedom.

M&A is a strategic enabler - Inorganic growth is no longer about size—it’s about synergy. Be it ace turtle acquiring licenses, TMRW onboarding new-age brands, or HomeLane acquiring complementary players, these moves are carefully designed for long-term integration.

Customer understanding is non-negotiable - From AI cameras in stores to centralized CRMs and immersive design tools, all strategies ultimately point towards one thing: knowing the customer better, and serving them faster.

The Road Ahead: Smarter, Leaner, Scalable

India’s consumer landscape is evolving at a breakneck pace. Gen Z and millennial buyers shop based on experiences, not just convenience or price. They are online today, in-store tomorrow, and expect personalization, speed, and trust everywhere.

Players like ace turtle, TMRW, and HomeLane are not just riding the wave—they are building the surfboard. By aligning category expertise with cutting-edge tech, they are defining what the future of omnichannel retail looks like.

“Tech is not our USP,” Chhabra summed it up best. “It’s our DNA.”

As competition intensifies and customer expectations skyrocket, the brands that will win are not those that merely adopt digital—they are the ones that are built on digital.