How Dista Built a Localized Global Commerce Experience with 3x Higher Conversions with Appbrew

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About Dista

Dista was built around a simple but ambitious idea: making Indian products truly accessible to customers across the world. Founder Kiran Kotla had spent over 15 years in Silicon Valley working with high-growth technology companies, and during that time he noticed a major gap in global commerce. Countries like China had already built massive export ecosystems through platforms like AliExpress and Temu, but Indian brands and products still lacked a unified global marketplace experience.

Dista was created to bridge that gap. What started as a cross-border commerce platform gradually evolved into a large-scale international marketplace spanning wellness, beauty, groceries, spirituality, apparel, baby care, home essentials, and more. Over time, the business expanded across the US, Europe, the Middle East, and APAC, serving customers with very different purchasing behaviors, shipping expectations, and localization needs.

As mobile traffic continued to grow, the team realized that a standard ecommerce app would not be enough. Dista had already built sophisticated systems on web around localization, delivery visibility, regional catalogs, and country specific shopping experiences, however, replicating that complexity consistently inside a mobile app became the real challenge.

The goal was not simply to launch another shopping app but to design a mobile experience that could preserve the depth, flexibility, and localized feel of their web infrastructure while creating a much stronger retention channel for international customers.

That is where Appbrew came in.

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The Challenge: Scaling International Commerce Beyond Standard Mobile Infrastructure

Dista’s business model introduced a level of operational complexity that most mobile commerce platforms were never designed to handle.

Unlike conventional DTC brands operating in a single geography, Dista served customers across multiple countries simultaneously, each with different currencies, catalogs, delivery timelines, and merchandising requirements. Localization was not an enhancement to the experience. It was the foundation of the business itself.

As mobile traffic continued to grow, several structural challenges became increasingly visible.

Unsatisfactory Search and Discovery at Scale

Dista operates across thousands of SKUs spanning wellness, beauty, food, spirituality, apparel, baby care, and household categories. Product discovery plays a major role in conversion across such a large catalog. However, their previous setup frequently surfaced archived and draft products during search, creating friction throughout the shopping journey and weakening customer trust in discovery.

Critical Cross Border Features Missing on Mobile

Dista had already invested heavily in creating a sophisticated international shopping experience on web. This included geo based storefront personalization, country specific pricing, delivery promise messaging, and localized catalogs. These systems were essential for helping international customers confidently place orders across long shipping corridors. However, recreating those workflows inside a mobile app became extremely difficult with conventional app builders.

Turning Mobile into a Retention Engine

Dista did not view the app as just another acquisition channel. The larger opportunity was retention. The team wanted to create a personalized shopping environment where repeat customers could browse localized catalogs, discover products faster, and engage with the brand more consistently across markets.

"Our internal target is to get app to 80% of purchases. To build a long-term sustainable business, we need a large audience coming from app. That's our goal — to build a strong retention flywheel." - Kiran Kotla

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The Solution: Building a Localized Mobile Commerce Engine

Appbrew partnered closely with Dista to recreate and extend their international commerce infrastructure inside a native mobile experience.

The objective was not simply app performance. It was building a mobile platform capable of supporting localization, operational transparency, personalized discovery, and retention at global scale.

Geo-Based Localisation Across Markets

Using Shopify Markets and GeoIP-based logic, Appbrew enabled the app to dynamically personalize storefront experiences based on customer location. Users automatically saw localized pricing, regional catalogs, country-specific shipping information, and personalized merchandising without requiring manual switching, creating a more native shopping experience for users across the US, UK, UAE, Europe, and APAC.

"We are a multi-country first marketplace. Each country should have its own customized experience — the currency, shipping rates, how fast they can get an order. Without AppBrew migrating those features to the app, we wouldn't be able to provide a consistent experience across multiple channels." - Kiran Kotla

Smarter Search and Discovery Across Large Catalogs

To improve browsing quality across Dista's massive catalog, Appbrew enabled a more scalable and intelligent search and merchandising experience optimized for mobile shopping behavior. The homepage itself evolved into a dynamic discovery layer combining category-led navigation, personalized merchandising, curated collections, and localized browsing behavior.

This made exploration across categories significantly more intuitive while improving product discoverability across regions.

Dedicated Rewards & Membership Experience

Appbrew helped Dista build a dedicated rewards and membership ecosystem directly inside the app, complete with tier based benefits, cashback points, referrals, review rewards, and subscription incentives. Customers could seamlessly track their status across Member, Elite, and Legendary tiers, creating a stronger retention loop and encouraging repeat purchases.

Dedicated Offers Tab for Discovery & Conversion

Appbrew also introduced a dedicated Offers tab that centralized promotions, coupon campaigns, bundle deals, and category discounts across wellness, beauty, food, apparel, and gifting. This gave Dista a scalable way to run localized campaigns while making offers significantly more discoverable for high intent shoppers.

A Retention Focused Mobile Experience

The app was designed not just to drive transactions, but to bring customers back consistently. Appbrew helped Dista create a stronger retention ecosystem through personalized push notifications, faster repeat purchase journeys, and region-aware customer experiences.

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The Results: Higher Conversion, Larger Baskets, and Stronger Mobile Revenue Contribution

Once Dista launched on Appbrew, the impact across engagement and commerce performance became immediately visible.

3x Higher Conversion Rate on App

The app converted at nearly three times the rate of web. Localized shopping experiences, smoother navigation, stronger delivery transparency, and improved discovery significantly reduced friction for international shoppers.

20% Higher Average Order Value

Average order value on app increased by 20% compared to web. Improved category discovery and more immersive browsing journeys encouraged customers to explore across multiple categories and build larger baskets.

22% of Total DTC Revenue Driven Through App

The app rapidly evolved into a major business channel for Dista, contributing 22% of total DTC revenue. What began as a mobile extension became a core part of Dista's global commerce infrastructure.

"When we were with Tapcart, our share of app revenue was barely 7%. But as soon as we moved to AppBrew, over the last nine months, we saw app sales increase from 7% to almost 22%. And this is happening while our overall revenue is also growing." - Kiran Kotla

A More Consistent International Shopping Experience

Most importantly, Dista achieved consistency across international markets. Customers across different geographies now experience localized storefronts that feel native to their region while still maintaining one unified Dista brand experience across channels.

As Kiran summarized during the podcast, recreating these systems on mobile was essential to maintaining consistency across the customer journey.

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Why Dista Chose Appbrew

Dista needed far more than a standard app builder. They needed a platform capable of supporting deep localization, Shopify Markets infrastructure, cross-border delivery visibility, scalable merchandising, personalized discovery, and long-term retention systems.

Appbrew delivered that flexibility while continuing to evolve alongside Dista’s international growth.

The partnership eventually expanded into a deeper technical collaboration as Dista continued scaling globally.

Dista’s journey reflects a broader shift happening across international ecommerce. The brands building durable global commerce businesses are no longer treating mobile as a lightweight storefront layer. They are using mobile to create deeply localized customer experiences that combine personalization, operational transparency, and retention infrastructure into one seamless environment.

"Most customers who want to use your service again and again — they would install your app. All our best customers are on the app, and best customers tend to spend more, stick with us longer, and have larger order values." - Kiran Kotla