Let’s rewind to 2021.

Two founders, a gummy vitamin, and a mission.

Vaibhav Makhija and Sayantani Mandal weren’t chasing wellness as a trend. They’d lived through the burnout. Seen firsthand how good health takes the backseat for hustlers, builders, and late-night warriors.

So they flipped the formula.

Instead of telling people to slow down… they gave them a fast-track.

What’s Up Wellness was born—a daily chewable wellness brand that made taking your vitamins as easy (and tasty) as popping candy.

The product was solid. Vegan. No added junk. It’s actually fun.

But here’s where most D2C brands get stuck: the initial hype fades, the CAC climbs, and suddenly, the business isn’t scalable.

What’s Up Wellness didn’t just avoid that cliff. They built a bridge over it—with retention as the core pillar.

Let’s break down how they made revenue jump by a massive 347% in just one year—without breaking the bank.

A Retention Engine With Teeth (And Gummies)

When What’s Up Wellness started scaling, they made one decision most brands skip: they didn’t chase top-of-funnel metrics.

They obsessed over the bottom.

What happens after someone buys? How can we bring them back without bombarding them?

Instead of pumping money into new customer acquisition, they built their own internal growth engine. And they went all in on automation.

Here’s what happened next 👇

🚀 400% surge in Add-To-Cart rates
📈 80.8% spike in Revenue Per User from conversions
💸 50.49% average click-through ROI
📬 Email open rates doubled—from 22% to 45%
📱 WhatsApp open rates hit a jaw-dropping 85%
🛒 Conversion Rate optimisation started contributing 27% to overall revenue
💰 Direct revenue from automation journeys increased by 55%

Just smart segmentation, hyper-relevant communication, and data-led journeys that made users feel seen—not sold to.

This no gimmick playbook turned out to be gold.

Retention-Led Growth Isn’t Luck. It’s An Engineered Mindset! 

Most D2C brands treat retention as a thing to “fix later.”

What’s Up Wellness flipped it from the start.

They didn’t wait till paid ads stopped working. They built personalised nudges from Day 1.

Each customer interaction became a data point. That data turned into dynamic journeys—personalised nudges based on user behavior, churn risk, or product lifecycle.

No more one-size-fits-all campaigns.

If you added to cart and dropped off, the next ping wasn’t a generic “Did you forget something?” message.

The follow up was contextual. Warm. Human.

Across product views, checkouts, churn cohorts, high-intent users—every touchpoint became an opportunity for retention-led storytelling.

Every journey ran, measured, refined. In days—not quarters. And this is exactly how they achieved 👇

• 12.3% uplift in M1 retention
• 7% uplift in mid-funnel (M3–M5) cohorts
• 5.2% winback from churned users
• 16.4% to 42% uplift in product view and checkout journeys

What’s Up Wellness Treated Retention As A Growth Function!

Every re-engagement push was expected to drive 4X–5X ROI. And it did.

This wasn’t about throwing tech at the problem. It was about rewiring how growth teams think.

Instead of “how do we get more traffic?” the question became: How do we get more out of the traffic we already have?

They moved from campaign-based thinking to system-based execution.

And the compounding effects started kicking in.

Lower CAC. Higher LTV. Better feedback loops. Happier customers.

This is what happens when D2C brands grow with their users, not at them.

Let’s Talk About The Channel Mix For What’s Up Wellness

You don’t get these numbers from just blasting emails.

WhatsApp became a powerhouse—with a 95% message delivery rate, even under Meta’s message cap limits.

More interesting?

WhatsApp contributed 74% of revenue from journeys.
Email? Still a strong performer at 21%.
SMS? 4%, used strategically.

But each channel wasn’t just a silo. They were stitched together into cohesive journeys.

Context flowed across channels.

A nudge on WhatsApp could follow an email open. An SMS could reactivate a cold lead.

They didn’t fight for attention. They earned it with consistency.

Because timing + tone + trigger > volume.

What’s Up Next?

Vaibhav and Sayantani didn’t just build a brand—they built behavior change.

And behavior change takes consistency, context, and credibility.

They’re now focusing on:

• Making email a more consistent revenue channel
• Building micro-segments (think high-frequency buyers, churn-risk cohorts)
• Designing predictive models around retention and LTV
• Creating richer personalisation for each stage of the customer journey

The goal? Not just more orders. But more impact per user.

A brand that blends into your lifestyle like second nature.