theCRUX × D2C Insider — The AI operating stack every D2C founder needs

Why This Weekend

One tool. Real operators. Monday-ready.

Three things make this bootcamp different from every other AI workshop you've sat through.

One tool, mastered

Builder mode, not chat mode.

Claude Code in the terminal. Two full days going deep on one tool so you leave shipping real agents and automated workflows — not prompting a chatbot and hoping.

Outcome: builder-mode muscle memory on Claude Code

Built with operators

Designed with the D2C Insider team.

Curriculum shaped with the D2C Insider team and founders already running AI on live brands. You leave with what's working this week — at your stage, in your category.

Outcome: peer playbooks, not theory decks

Systems + intuition

Monday feels different.

You build the systems and the instincts behind them on your own brand. Walk in curious. Walk out with a new lens, a new approach, and the confidence to keep compounding.

Outcome: shipped systems + a founder's AI instinct

Curriculum

Two days. Back-to-back sessions. Everything built.

Every working session ends with a deliverable on your actual brand — bookended by founder keynotes on Day 1 and Day 2.

Day 1 Saturday — Market Intelligence & Content

9:30 AM

Opening Keynote: The AI-Native D2C Brand Why D2C is at an inflection point — and what the operators who move early will build.

We open the weekend with the why — why D2C is at an inflection point, what the next 5 years look like, and what the operators who move early will actually build. 30 minutes of strategic framing before we start shipping systems.

Strategic frame for everything that follows

10:00 AM

Your D2C AI Command Center The 30 minutes that lets the next 12 sessions run on your brand, not a template.

A 30-minute brand positioning exercise where you articulate your voice, audience, competitors, and unique wedge — then bake it into your CLAUDE.md. Every session after this runs on your actual brand context, not a generic template.

Brand positioning articulated and loaded into CLAUDE.md

11:15 AM

Market Intelligence The ₹3–5L/month competitive intelligence a D2C agency would sell you. Running on demand.

Build a system that tracks your key competitors plus category-level signals — pricing, positioning, launches, content, and what the market is rewarding. Intel on demand, not when you remember to check.

Market + competitor intel report you can rerun any time

1:15 PM

Customer Voice Mining The research a ₹50Cr brand does before every launch. Done by you in 90 minutes — and it keeps getting smarter.

Mine reviews, support tickets, and social comments to extract themes, sentiments, and persona cards — then wire the pipeline so it keeps running. Every new review, ticket, and return reason feeds back in, so your customer understanding gets sharper as the brand grows. Voice as a compounding moat, not a one-time audit.

Themes, personas + a Voice-of-Customer pipeline that keeps learning

2:45 PM

Content Factory 90 days of on-brand content, produced in 90 minutes. Without hiring a content team.

Build your content production pipeline — a 30-day calendar with 20+ ready-to-publish pieces including marketplace listing copy across formats. Every output runs through a brand-safety check layer (when to trust AI, when to verify) before it ships — especially critical if you're in health, food, or supplements where a wrong claim is a regulatory problem, not a tone problem.

30-day calendar + 20 ready pieces + marketplace listing copy + brand-safety validation framework

4:15 PM

Day 1 Integration Three systems become one loop. Intel feeds voice. Voice feeds content. Content compounds.

Connect everything from Day 1 into a single Intelligence-to-Content workflow. Competitor intel feeds customer insights, which feeds content creation. One loop.

Connected Intelligence-to-Content workflow

Day 2 Sunday — Growth & Operations

9:30 AM

Practitioner Keynote: AI in Production at a D2C Brand AI inside a scaling D2C brand. What's working, what broke, what to copy.

A founder or operator currently running AI workflows inside a scaled D2C brand walks through what they actually do — what's working, what broke, what they'd tell a founder starting today. 30 minutes of ground truth from someone already living it.

Pattern-match to a brand that's already shipping

10:00 AM

Ad Copy & Creative Strategy Engine 50 ad variations a creative agency would charge ₹2L for — in your voice, not theirs.

Generate 50+ ad variations across platforms — Meta, Google, email — with creative briefs and A/B testing frameworks built in. Never start from a blank page again.

50+ ad variations

11:30 AM

Landing Page & PDP Optimizer Amazon A+ listings an agency would charge ₹1L each for. Built for every SKU you own.

Optimize 5 product detail pages across your website, Amazon, and Flipkart — plus 1 landing page with CRO analysis. Build a reusable pipeline for your entire catalog across every marketplace.

5 Amazon/Flipkart PDPs + landing page + CRO report

1:30 PM

Operations Autopilot The Ops hire you've been postponing — built as a system that runs while you sleep.

Build the operational backbone: SOPs, a vendor communication kit, a support playbook, and an AI-powered WhatsApp retention system that personalizes every message against purchase history and customer segment — not just a template library. Layer in a returns analysis module that reads your Shopify/OMS data and flags the real drivers of returns (region, SKU, description mismatch) so you recover revenue that usually leaks silently.

SOPs + Vendor Kit + Support Playbook + WhatsApp retention system + Returns insights

3:00 PM

Growth Dashboard & Decision Engine The weekly board deck a fractional CFO builds you. Auto-generated every Monday.

Build your growth analysis report with unit economics and a weekly auto-brief system. Data-driven decisions on autopilot.

Growth report + weekly auto-brief

4:15 PM

Capstone: Your D2C Command Center Everything connected. One Command Center. Your 90-day runway starts Sunday night.

Connect every system from both days into one integrated Command Center with a 90-day growth roadmap. Walk away with a complete, reusable prompt library.

Everything connected + 90-day roadmap

5:15 PM

Closing Circle: Reflections & Peer Commitments Capture what you built. Commit to what's next. Feedback both ways.

A final 30-minute round to share what you shipped, capture on-camera reflections, and align with the cohort on what happens next week — not next year. Feedback flows both ways so Cohort 2 is sharper.

Cohort commitments + on-record reflections + next-step plan

Your AI Team

Meet the ten teammates you'll build.

You won't be figuring out what an AI team looks like. You'll walk out of the weekend with these ten teammates running on your actual brand.

Brand Strategist

Knows your positioning, tone, and non-negotiables cold.

Claude Code workspace with brand DNA

Competitive Analyst

Tracks pricing, launches, and what the category is rewarding.

Competitor Intelligence Report

Customer Researcher

Surfaces themes, personas, and the angles that actually convert.

Customer Voice Report

Content Director

Plans the calendar, ships the assets, keeps the pipeline full.

30-Day Content Calendar Ready-to-publish pieces Intel-to-Content workflow

Ad Creative Lead

Writes hooks, variations, and marketplace-specific angles on demand.

Ad Copy Bank (incl. marketplace) Creative Brief Generator

Marketplace Manager

Optimizes PDPs, landing pages, and conversion across channels.

Amazon & Flipkart PDPs Landing Page Rewrite CRO Recommendation Report

Ops Lead

Codifies the SOPs and vendor comms so nothing relies on memory.

SOPs + Vendor Communication Kit

Support & Retention Manager

Runs the playbook and segment-aware WhatsApp flows.

Support Playbook WhatsApp Retention System

Growth Analyst

Reads the numbers, flags what's moving, briefs you every week.

Growth Analysis + Unit Economics Weekly Auto-Brief

Chief of Staff

Ties the team together with a command center and a roadmap.

D2C Command Center 90-Day Growth Roadmap Reusable Prompt Library

Who It's For

Founders-only. 25 seats. Cohort 1.

This is a founders-first room. You'll leave with systems running on your actual brand — which means we need founder-level context and access in the room.

The Bootstrapped Founder

Rs.50L – 5Cr revenue

You're doing content, ads, ops, and support yourself while juggling Shopify, Amazon Seller Central, and Flipkart. You can't afford a growth team, but you can build one in a weekend.

Full Command Center that acts as your growth team

The Scaling Founder

Rs.5Cr – 50Cr revenue

You have a team but bandwidth is still the ceiling. Creative output, marketplace iteration, retention flows — everything depends on tribal knowledge and manual effort.

Content Factory, Ad Engine, and Ops Autopilot at scale

To get full value, you'll need:

An active D2C brand with live orders (founder or senior team member operating it)
Access to your Shopify / Amazon / Flipkart / WhatsApp data during the sessions
A laptop, willingness to plug in real brand context, and 2 full weekend days

Can't make every session? One plus-one from your team is allowed. Team-wide enrollment will open in a future cohort.

Your Instructors

Practitioners, not theorists.

We've built and scaled D2C brands. Now we teach the systems that made it possible.

Bharanidharan Viswanathan

Lead Instructor

3X founder. 20+ years building from zero — B2C, B2B, and cross-border logistics. Built 91mobiles into India's largest gadget research platform, then SaaSworthy, then Intoglo. Now building an AI venture studio obsessed with ultra-lean teams running million-dollar businesses on the back of AI.

Went deep on AI in 2021 — maths, algorithms, fundamentals. Built a sharp filter for what's useful versus what's hype.

Brings a builder's impatience for theory, a founder's bias for shipping, and a teacher's instinct for making hard things click.

Shameek Chakravarty

Lead Instructor

3X founder. 20+ years building products across startups and big tech — Amazon, Yahoo, Sun Microsystems, Juniper Networks. Then left it all to found Farmizen, connecting 7,000+ organic farmers directly to families. Now back in the trenches at Mantid AI, building agentic AI to augment blue-collar workers.

Straddles technical and non-technical worlds — from adtech to agritech, engineering to go-to-market.

Brings big-tech rigour, founder scrappiness, and the patience of someone who has coached hundreds of professionals before.

Puneet Sharma

Instructor

2X founder scaling D2C and cross-border marketplaces. Built Ekrayah into a ₹1 Cr/month global dropshipping operation, then The Paan Legacy — a modern gourmet take on a traditional Indian experience, now across 4 Mumbai locations and 1 in the Maldives.

Went deep on performance marketing and eCommerce automation — Amazon SP APIs, repricer systems, multi-marketplace operations across 10+ global platforms.

Brings an operator's intolerance for fluff, a founder's bias for execution, and a teacher's ability to make complex marketing systems feel approachable.

FAQ

Questions you're probably asking.

No. Zero coding required. Claude Code is a conversational tool — you describe what you want in plain English and it builds the system. If you can write a brief, you can use Claude Code.

Claude Pro ($20/month, ~Rs.1,800) is the recommended starting point. Many founders upgrade to Claude Max during the workshop once they see how much they'll run. We'll share exact setup instructions before Day 1.

We maintain a 1:8 TA-to-student ratio. If you get stuck, a TA will jump in immediately. We also have office hours after each day for catch-up.

Yes. The systems are category-agnostic — fashion, beauty, food, home, electronics, wellness. Whether you sell on Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, your own Shopify store, or all of them — the systems adapt. You build everything on your actual brand, so the outputs are immediately relevant.

Full refund after Day 1 if you're not satisfied. No questions asked. We'd rather have happy alumni than reluctant students.

Yes — both ₹29,999 and ₹39,999 are inclusive of GST. A GST invoice in your brand's name is available on request, so if you're GST-registered you can claim input tax credit. Many founders expense this through the brand entity as L&D or marketing training.

ChatGPT gives you outputs — one response at a time. Claude Code builds systems — interconnected workflows that remember your brand, learn from your data, and compound over time. It's the difference between a calculator and a spreadsheet.

This cohort is founder-first — the room is designed for brand owners with decision-making context. If you can't attend a session, one plus-one from your team is welcome. Team-wide enrollment opens in a future cohort.

You'll be plugging in your actual Shopify, Amazon/Flipkart, and WhatsApp data during the sessions — that's how the systems end up working on your real brand instead of a demo. If something isn't set up, we'll provide sample data so you don't miss the exercise, but the real unlock comes from using your own numbers.

Run Your D2C Brand With a 10-Person AI Team. Built in One Weekend.

One tool. Real operators. Monday-ready.

Builder mode, not chat mode.

Designed with the D2C Insider team.

Monday feels different.

Your week looks like this. Every week.

Three systems. One integrated engine.

Market Intelligence

Content & Creative

Growth & Operations

Two days. Back-to-back sessions. Everything built.

Meet the ten teammates you'll build.

Monday looks completely different.

Founders-only. 25 seats. Cohort 1.

Not another AI workshop.

Practitioners, not theorists.

Less than one month of a junior hire.

Questions you're probably asking.

Every week you spend doing manually what Claude Code can systematize is a week your competitors are pulling ahead.