What Is a Good ROAS for D2C Brands in India? 2026 Benchmarks by Category

What Is a Good ROAS for D2C Brands in India? 2026 Benchmarks by Category

Every D2C brand running digital ads in India eventually asks the same question: is our ROAS good? We spend hours optimising campaigns, refreshing dashboards, and debating target numbers with our teams — but rarely with a clear benchmark against which to measure performance.

This article gives you those benchmarks. It draws from our work managing performance marketing campaigns for 25+ Indian D2C brands across categories, combined with industry data available for 2026. We will also explain why the number itself is only part of the picture.

First: Why ROAS Means Different Things to Different Brands

Before the benchmarks, a critical caveat. The same ROAS number — say, 4x — can mean a highly profitable business for one brand and a loss-making one for another, depending on gross margins and business structure.

A furniture brand with a 65% gross margin is profitable at 3x ROAS. A fashion brand with a 35% gross margin may need 5x ROAS to remain profitable. Your benchmark is not your category average — it is your minimum viable ROAS calculated from your actual unit economics.

The minimum viable ROAS formula: divide 1 by your gross margin percentage. At 50% gross margin, minimum viable ROAS is 2x. At 60% gross margin, it is 1.67x. This is the floor below which you are losing money on your product. You need your actual ROAS to be well above this floor to cover your other business costs and generate net profit.

With that foundation in place, here are the 2026 benchmarks.

India D2C ROAS Benchmarks by Category (Meta Ads, 2026)

Fashion and Apparel: Average ROAS 2.5–4.5x. Category is highly competitive with significant CPM increases over the past two years. Brands with strong creative differentiation and high review volume achieve the upper range. Brands with commoditised products and generic creative typically sit at the lower end. Average order values are often low (₹800–2,500), which limits ROAS ceiling.

Electronics and Gadgets: Average ROAS 3–6x. Higher average order values (₹2,000–15,000) allow for stronger ROAS. Google Shopping outperforms Meta for most electronics purchases due to high search intent. The best-performing brands run Meta for brand awareness and retargeting and Google Shopping for conversion.

Furniture and Home: Average ROAS 4–8x. One of the strongest categories for Meta Ads in India due to high average order values (₹5,000–50,000+), strong visual creative performance, and longer purchase consideration cycles that benefit from retargeting. Our own client in this category achieved 7.82x ROAS on ₹76,000 in ad spend generating ₹5.95 lakh in revenue — significantly above category average, driven by precise audience segmentation and high-converting creative.

Beauty and Skincare: Average ROAS 3–5x. Category benefits from strong repeat purchase rates, which means LTV-adjusted ROAS is often higher than initial purchase ROAS suggests. Subscription or bundle offers significantly improve first-purchase ROAS by increasing AOV.

Jewellery and Accessories: Average ROAS 4–7x. High AOV (₹3,000–50,000+) and strong aspiration-driven creative perform well. Festival periods (Diwali, Dhanteras, wedding season) see significant ROAS spikes. Off-season ROAS can drop sharply.

Health and Wellness: Average ROAS 2.5–4.5x. Regulated advertising constraints (around health claims) limit creative freedom and increase CPM. Brands that build strong community trust and email lists see better sustained ROAS over time.

Meta Ads vs Google Ads: Why the Numbers Look Different

A common frustration: brands running both platforms often see higher reported ROAS on Google than on Meta and conclude Google is performing better. This is usually a measurement illusion.

Google captures demand that already exists — users searching "buy ergonomic office chair India" are ready to purchase. Google's ROAS looks high because it is showing ads to people at the bottom of the funnel. Meta creates demand earlier in the journey — users scrolling Instagram weren't thinking about office chairs until they saw your ad. Meta's contribution to the final purchase often goes unmeasured.

A more accurate view: use a multi-touch attribution model or run incrementality tests. Brands that do this consistently find that Meta's true contribution to revenue is significantly higher than last-click attribution suggests — and that turning off Meta spending causes Google's "organic" and "direct" revenue to drop as well.

The Number You Should Actually Optimise For

Chasing the highest ROAS number is a mistake many Indian D2C brands make. High ROAS targets constrain your campaign AI, causing it to chase only the most certain conversions and miss the broader volume of profitable customers who would have converted at a slightly lower ROAS.

The ROAS target you set in your campaigns should be the lowest ROAS at which you are sustainably profitable — not the highest your campaigns can theoretically achieve. At this target, your AI has the flexibility to acquire more customers profitably, compounding your growth over time.

If you are unsure whether your current ROAS targets are too high, too low, or appropriately calibrated to your unit economics, we are happy to review your account and give you a clear answer.

Related reading: Performance Marketing for D2C India | Meta & Google Ads Management