Avant Amour Avant Amour

For D2C founders

Customer research for D2C brands who've outgrown guesswork.

There comes a point when analytics stop being enough. Cohort drop-offs and funnel charts can tell you what happened. They cannot tell you why. This page is for the founder standing at that wall.

You've shipped the product. The dashboards are wired up. Mixpanel and a SQL query can answer most questions inside the funnel. But the questions outside the funnel — the ones that change your roadmap, your pricing, your packaging copy — those need a different instrument.

Ethnography is that instrument. We sit with your customer. We watch the decision get made. We listen for the half-second pause that tells us where the friction actually is. Then we write you a short, sharp report you can act on next sprint.

Talk to Arrpita about your question →

Questions we routinely answer

  • Which customer segment do we double down on next quarter — and which do we deprioritise?
  • Why does our repeat rate fall off a cliff between order two and order three?
  • What is the actual job our category is being hired to do — and is our messaging aligned with it?
  • Where in the product does the customer hesitate, and what are they hesitating about?
  • How do customers in tier-2 and tier-3 cities use our app differently from metro customers?
  • Is our packaging doing what we hope it is doing on the shelf and in the unboxing video?
  • Why are customers churning? In their words, not in our reason-code dropdown.
  • Should we launch the new variant, the new SKU, or the new format first?

How this is different from agency research

Most agency research is built for buyers at large companies — multi-stage approvals, methodologies that span months, decks that are designed to justify themselves. That model doesn't fit a D2C founder who needs to make a decision by the end of the quarter.

Avant Amour is built the opposite way. One senior researcher (the founder) runs the project end-to-end. Engagements are two to three weeks for a focused study, longer for multi-city fieldwork, scoped on a one-pager. The output is a point of view, not a slide template. You can ask follow-up questions on WhatsApp for thirty days after delivery.

In their words

What people who've worked with Arrpita say.

“Arrpita was given a research project on ethnography and she has delivered the insights in the most scientific manner. Her ability to take the project to conclusion, understand the domain, understand behaviours and then connect the dots to get unique insights was commendable.”
Farida Hussain Chief Marketing Officer, USV · 2025
“Arrpita worked with us on a couple of ethnography projects. She clearly knows her subject very well. She did her studies and brought out insights that were consistent with our understanding. It was therefore a good validation. She is a purist and follows methodologies and styles accordingly.”
Kaushik Majumder Former CEO · 2018
From recommendations on Arrpita's LinkedIn profile.

Engagement models

Project-based for a specific question (most common). Embedded research retainer for brands running continuous research alongside product. Diagnostic sprints for a narrow, time-boxed question.

Q&A

Frequently asked questions

What does a project cost?
Engagements are priced by scope, not by the hour. Most projects fall between a few lakhs and a small number of tens of lakhs. The first call always includes a rough budget band.
How long until we have findings?
Most projects run two to three weeks. A multi-city study — 100 in-home ethnographies across 13 cities over eight weeks, for instance — takes longer. A WhatsApp diary study runs five to ten days. The scoping conversation gives you an exact timeline.
How many customers will you talk to?
Around 30 participants for most projects, though it depends on the research question — a WhatsApp diary study might run with 50 customers. Saturation, not statistical sampling, drives the number.
Do you sign NDAs?
Yes. Mutual NDAs at scoping; project-specific confidentiality terms in the engagement letter. Case studies are anonymised even after the engagement ends.
Who owns the research data?
You do. Raw materials — transcripts, voice notes, field notes — are handed over at the end of the engagement. We retain anonymised excerpts only with written permission.

Tell us about the question keeping you up at night.

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