[App Fridays] Social commerce app d’hybrid gives an elegant spin to lifestyle and grooming for urban men

With increased digitisation and the widespread use of social media, the way we shop is also changing. This has led to the rise of social commerce.

According to a report by Bain & Company and Sequoia India, the country's social commerce market India is all set to touch $20 billion by 2025, driven by conversational commerce on chat platforms, video-led sales, as well as a vibrant social reseller community.

Tapping this market is a newly launched app called d’hybrid, a consumer-centric, short-form platform available on both iOS and Android.

It is a content-led discovery platform that provides curated fashion, grooming and lifestyle to the urban audience, while also helping them discover and connect with their favourite brands.

A brainchild of Kapil Batus, former Creative and Fashion Director at Rolling Stone India and Man’s World Magazine, d’hybrid aims to create a credible product that simplifies fashion and grooming discovery, especially for men, on an organised platform.

At the launch on May 27, the company shared that over the years, many brands have created platforms catering to the needs of women, whereas the landscape for the men's segment is highly under-serviced. That’s what d’hybrid aims to solve.

This week, we decided to walk through this new app and tell you our first impressions.

Let's get started!

After you download the app, you need to sign up with your full name and mobile number. When you set up a profile, you have to give information such as your age group, city, preferences from categories like culture, grooming, lifestyle, sustainability, and urban luxe.

You will then see a full-screen image of products and service on the home page. 

These photographs come with categories and tags such as ‘urban culture’, ‘home brand’, ‘luxe’, and more. Upon tapping, the screen slides up, showing the description of the product/brand and a connect button that takes you to the shopping website or the brand’s Instagram page.

d’hybrid has a portfolio of some niche and homegrown brands as well as established brands like Adidas, Kiehl’s, Dolce&Gabana, Minimalist, Nike, Murad, and so on.

To browse further, you just need to swipe right and go through products like face serum, shoes, apparel, personal care, grooming kits, wellness tips, fashion trends, hair trends, and more. The app has a mix of photos and full-screen short-form videos such as Instagram Reels to engage the users.

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New-age magazine

The home page is split into three sections – Explore, Personalised, and Bookmarked.

The bookmark section shows the products you have marked while browsing, while the personalised section offers content such as Instagram stories, motivational posts from famous entrepreneurs like Kunal Shah, health and wellness content from famous yoga trainers, grooming tips, sustainable living content, and more.

The personalised section aims to be a new-age fashion and lifestyle magazine focused on urban men, which can serve as a guide, as well as a source of inspiration and information.

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Curated browsing

Users get personalised feeds curated based on their browsing patterns. This personalisation is run on artificial intelligence, similar to OTT platforms like Netflix suggest what you can watch next based on your history.

Though optional, the app can also use the information you share when you set up a profile to personalise the offering.

The verdict

Overall, we really like the app for its elegance and its redefined focus on men’s grooming and lifestyle. The only challenge we faced was that we could not find the app when searching on the Google Play Store.

So, we went to d’hybrid’s Instagram’s page and used the app link mentioned in the bio. The app is also available on Apple’s App Store.

The user interface (UI) of the app is refreshing and extremely elegant, owing to its minimalism and high-quality look and feel of the media embedded on the app.

d'hybrid keeps in mind the content consumption of millennial and Gen Z users, and engages with urban consumers interested in lifestyle products in a novel way.

Overall the app is easy to use, and provides a new way of consuming lifestyle content for urban young men. We would absolutely recommend that you browse the app, and see what products and brands interest you.