We read 120 Instagram bios of Mumbai D2C brands

The scope

We captured the Instagram bios of 120 Mumbai D2C brands — skincare, snacks, apparel, and home goods — over two weeks in June 2026. Each bio was coded by hand against nine features: who it addresses, what it promises, whether it carries proof, and whether it tells the reader what to do next. No tools, no scraping — screenshots and a spreadsheet.

The pattern

83 of the 120 bios — 69% — spend their 150 characters describing what the brand is, not what the buyer gets. “Handcrafted · Small batch · Made in India” appears in some form 54 times. Only 21 bios name a buyer benefit, and just 9 tell the reader what to do next.

Why it happens

Bios are written at launch, by founders describing the product to themselves, and then never revisited because nobody owns the bio. It sits below the threshold of a “project”, so it drifts while the grid above it changes every day.

The cost

Estimate: a profile visit converts to a follow or a tap-through at roughly 8–12% when the bio leads with the buyer's gain; the what-we-are bios in our sample sat nearer 3–4%. On 2,000 monthly profile visits, that gap is around a hundred lost follows a month — people who had already found you.

The exception

One Bandra snack brand's bio reads: “The chivda your train journey deserves. Order by 4pm, ships same day.” Buyer, promise, and deadline in thirteen words. Their link-tap rate, the founder told us, doubled the week they changed it.

What we’d do

Rewrite the bio as gain + proof + action: what the buyer gets, one reason to believe it, what to do next. It takes an afternoon, needs no redesign, and we will do it free on a discovery call — bring your current bio.