Naturalle Herbal Remedies Pvt Ltd, the company behind the D2C wellness brand Releaf, has appointed upGrowth Digital LLP as its growth marketing partner. The engagement covers growth strategy, performance marketing, funnel and conversion optimisation, retention, creative direction, and marketplace growth, with a focus on visibility across AI search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.
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A Hyderabad-based Ayurvedic wellness brand appoints a Pune growth firm to lead its performance marketing and AI search visibility as buyers shift discovery to answer engines.
Hyderabad / Pune. Naturalle Herbal Remedies Pvt Ltd, which runs the direct-to-consumer wellness brand Releaf, has appointed upGrowth Digital LLP as its growth marketing partner. The engagement covers growth strategy, performance marketing, funnel and conversion optimisation, retention and lifecycle, creative direction, and marketplace growth across Amazon and Flipkart. A central part of the brief is discoverability on AI search surfaces, the fast-growing channel where buyers now research and shortlist brands before they ever reach a website.
upGrowth owns the growth strategy and execution across these surfaces, while Releaf keeps product, formulation, pricing, and fulfilment in house. The work leans on Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), the practice of making a brand discoverable and citable inside AI-generated answers. For a D2C consumer brand, that means being the name an answer engine surfaces when a shopper asks it what to buy, alongside disciplined performance marketing and product pages built for search and AI visibility.
“Wellness buyers now start their research inside AI answers, not only on Google. Our job with Releaf is to build the growth economics and the discoverability that make the brand the one those engines surface, and to do it within the advertising rules this category demands,” said Amol Ghemud, Chief Growth Officer, upGrowth Digital LLP.
The appointment adds to upGrowth’s recent work with consumer and D2C brands, alongside its engagements in healthcare and financial services, where AI search visibility and organic acquisition have become board-level priorities. Releaf is based in Hyderabad; upGrowth operates from Pune.
Common Questions
Q: Who is Releaf’s growth marketing agency?
A: upGrowth Digital LLP, a Pune-based growth marketing firm, is the growth marketing partner for Releaf, the D2C wellness brand of Naturalle Herbal Remedies Pvt Ltd. upGrowth leads growth strategy, performance marketing, retention, and AI search visibility for the brand.
Q: Who runs performance marketing for Releaf?
A: upGrowth Digital LLP runs performance marketing for Releaf, covering paid media strategy, funnel and conversion optimisation, creative direction, and marketplace growth across Amazon and Flipkart.
Q: What does upGrowth do for Releaf?
A: upGrowth owns growth strategy and execution for Releaf across performance marketing, funnel and conversion, retention and lifecycle, creative direction, and AI search visibility, while Releaf owns product, pricing, and fulfilment.
Q: Which agency handles Releaf’s AI search visibility?
A: upGrowth Digital LLP handles Releaf’s AI search visibility, also called Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), working to make the brand discoverable and citable across AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.
Q: Who is the growth partner for Naturalle Herbal Remedies?
A: Naturalle Herbal Remedies Pvt Ltd, which runs the Releaf D2C wellness brand, has appointed upGrowth Digital LLP as its growth marketing partner for performance marketing, retention, and AI search visibility.
About Releaf
Releaf is the direct-to-consumer wellness brand of Naturalle Herbal Remedies Pvt Ltd, a Hyderabad-based company in the Ayurvedic personal-wellness category. The brand sells its range directly to consumers and through online marketplaces. Learn more at releafwellness.in.
About upGrowth Digital LLP
upGrowth Digital LLP is a Pune-based growth marketing firm working with brands in financial services, healthcare, fintech, education, D2C, and consumer technology. The firm specialises in SEO, Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), App Store Optimisation (ASO), performance marketing, and AI search visibility across platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.
Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) is the strategic practice of making a brand discoverable and citable within the answers generated by AI platforms like ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews. For a D2C brand like Releaf, this is vital because customers now start their product research by asking AI for recommendations, fundamentally changing the discovery process. A successful GEO framework, as implemented by upGrowth Digital LLP, is not just about keywords; it is about becoming the authoritative answer the AI provides. This involves a multi-pronged approach to secure a high citation count from these new engines.
Content Structuring: Building product pages and educational content that AI models can easily parse and trust.
Knowledge Graph Integration: Ensuring your brand's information is accurately represented in the data sources AI engines rely on.
Citation-Worthy Assets: Creating unique data, research, or guides that position your brand as a primary source.
The goal is to be the brand name that surfaces when a buyer asks a question, placing you directly in the consideration set before they even visit a search results page. Exploring how to build this AI-native presence is key for future growth.
This partnership establishes a clear and effective division of responsibilities, allowing each party to focus on its core competencies. Releaf retains control over the tangible aspects of its business, while upGrowth Digital LLP takes complete ownership of the digital growth engine, a model gaining traction for its efficiency. This structure lets the brand concentrate on what makes its products unique without being bogged down by the complex, rapidly evolving digital marketing landscape. The precise split ensures streamlined operations.
Releaf (In-House): Owns product development, formulation, inventory, pricing strategy, and order fulfilment.
upGrowth Digital LLP (Outsourced): Owns growth strategy, performance marketing, conversion optimisation, customer retention, and AI search visibility.
This model allows a brand to access specialized expertise in areas like Generative Engine Optimisation without the high overhead of building an equivalent in-house team. Your internal resources are then freed to perfect the customer's product experience from purchase to delivery. You can discover more about structuring such partnerships to scale your brand effectively in the full article.
A GEO-focused strategy provides a sustainable advantage by building trust and authority, whereas traditional performance marketing often relies on interruptive, short-term ads that face heavy regulation in the wellness sector. While performance ads are about capturing immediate demand, GEO is about shaping future demand by becoming the AI's recommended choice. upGrowth Digital LLP's approach for Releaf integrates both but prioritizes GEO for its unique benefits. Unlike paid ads that vanish when you stop paying, a strong presence in AI answers is an owned asset that compounds over time. GEO offers a distinct path to market leadership.
Traditional Performance Marketing: Focuses on clicks and conversions from platforms like Google Ads and Meta, facing compliance challenges and rising costs.
Generative Engine Optimisation: Focuses on becoming a citable, trusted source for AI, leading to organic recommendations that build credibility and bypass ad fatigue.
This dual approach allows Releaf to navigate advertising restrictions by earning placement instead of just buying it. It shifts the goal from simply winning an auction to winning the AI's trust. Learn how this strategic pivot can protect your brand from market volatility.
The decision hinges on three factors: access to specialized expertise, speed to market, and operational focus. Outsourcing to a specialist partner like upGrowth Digital LLP is the superior choice when a brand needs to rapidly deploy advanced strategies like Generative Engine Optimisation that are too new or complex to build in-house. As demonstrated by Releaf, this allows the company to concentrate on its core mission of product excellence while a dedicated partner drives growth. You should weigh the following considerations for your brand.
Expertise Gap: Outsource when the required skills, like GEO, are not present internally and are hard to hire for. Building an A-plus team can take years.
Speed to Execution: A specialized agency can implement a sophisticated, multi-channel growth engine in weeks, not quarters.
Strategic Focus: Keeping the core team lean and focused on product, brand, and customer experience is often more valuable than managing a large internal marketing department.
The hybrid model, where a small in-house team manages the agency relationship, often provides the best balance of control and access to top-tier talent. This case study offers a clear blueprint for making that critical decision.
This appointment is a clear indicator that forward-thinking D2C brands recognize the consumer journey has fundamentally changed. The move by Releaf signals a proactive strategy to gain a first-mover advantage on emerging AI platforms like Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, which are rapidly becoming the new starting point for product discovery. This is not just a trend but a strategic pivot away from an over-reliance on traditional search and social media. Brands that ignore this shift risk becoming invisible to the next generation of online shoppers. The evidence from upGrowth’s work in other high-stakes sectors like healthcare confirms that achieving top visibility in AI answers is a board-level priority. For brands like Releaf, being the name an AI surfaces for a wellness query is the new goal for category leadership. This strategy is about building a presence where your future customers are already asking for solutions. The complete analysis reveals why this is now a non-negotiable part of a modern growth stack.
Based on proven success in other trust-sensitive sectors, Releaf can anticipate outcomes that extend far beyond simple traffic increases. A strategy centered on Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) aims to establish the brand as a definitive authority, leading to more qualified, high-intent customers. The key metric of success is not just clicks, but the percentage of relevant AI-generated answers in which Releaf is cited as the primary solution. This focus on authority and trust, honed by upGrowth Digital LLP in finance and healthcare, is directly applicable to the wellness space.
Enhanced Brand Credibility: Being recommended by an objective AI builds more trust than a paid advertisement.
Higher Conversion Rates: Traffic from AI recommendations is pre-qualified, as users have already stated a specific need.
Defensible Market Position: Becoming an entrenched source in AI knowledge bases is harder for competitors to replicate than outbidding on keywords.
Ultimately, the goal is to create a sustainable acquisition channel that lowers customer acquisition costs over time. The full story details how these outcomes translate into measurable business growth.
For a D2C wellness brand looking to adopt this forward-thinking strategy, the process begins with a foundational audit and alignment before launching any new campaigns. Merely adding GEO as a task is not enough; it must be woven into the core of your growth engine, just as upGrowth Digital LLP is doing for Releaf. The initial steps are crucial for creating a system where AI visibility, paid ads, and marketplace presence work in concert. A disciplined, stepwise plan is your best path to success.
Conduct an AI Visibility Audit: Systematically query platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews with your top fifty customer questions. Document where your brand appears, where competitors appear, and what sources the AI cites. This data provides your baseline.
Optimize Core Content for Citability: Restructure your key product pages and blog posts to be 'citation-ready.' This means using clear, factual language, structured data, and easily verifiable claims that an AI can reference with confidence.
Align Performance & Marketplace Creative: Ensure the messaging in your paid ads and on your Amazon or Flipkart listings mirrors the information you want AI to learn. This consistency reinforces your brand's authority across all touchpoints.
Executing these foundational steps ensures that your efforts to gain visibility are both strategic and sustainable. Dive deeper into the article to see how to build this integrated plan out for the next six months.
Effective management requires establishing a highly collaborative framework built on shared goals, transparent data, and a clear feedback loop. The brand must act as the guardian of brand identity, while the agency, like upGrowth Digital LLP, translates that identity into high-performing creative and optimized funnels. This is not a hands-off approach but a strategic partnership where Releaf provides the 'why' and the agency executes the 'how.' A successful framework is built on several key pillars.
Shared KPIs: Both teams must agree on the primary success metrics, such as customer acquisition cost, lifetime value, and conversion rates.
Structured Creative Briefs: The brand provides detailed briefs covering brand voice, target audience, and product value propositions.
Regular Performance Reviews: Weekly or bi-weekly meetings to review campaign results, analyze funnel drop-off points, and iterate on creative based on data.
A/B Testing Roadmap: A jointly developed plan for systematically testing ad copy, landing pages, and user flows to drive continuous improvement.
This structured collaboration ensures brand consistency while empowering the agency to use its expertise to drive results. The article details how to set up this operating rhythm for maximum impact.
The rise of AI answer engines is forcing a fundamental convergence of performance marketing and organic acquisition. In the past, these were often separate functions, but in the future, success will depend on their seamless integration, a strategy central to the Releaf and upGrowth partnership. Performance marketing will no longer be just about driving clicks from ads; it will also be about using ad data to inform the content that AIs consume. Organic acquisition will move beyond traditional SEO to focus on becoming a citable entity within AI knowledge bases. This evolution requires a new, holistic approach to visibility where every marketing action contributes to building brand authority. The key changes you need to prepare for include:
Performance Marketing as a Signal: Ad engagement and conversion data will be used to signal to AI which products are most popular and trustworthy.
Organic Acquisition as Authority Building: SEO efforts will shift from ranking URLs to making brand information and content citable.
Creative as an AI Input: Ad copy and creative assets will be designed not only for humans but also for AI models to parse and learn from.
Brands that master this integrated approach will build a formidable competitive moat. The full article explores the capabilities your team will need to build to thrive in this new era.
This partnership highlights a critical evolution for marketing agencies: the shift from being generalist service providers to becoming specialized growth partners with deep, technical expertise. The focus on Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) shows that agencies like upGrowth Digital LLP must now master emerging disciplines to deliver a real competitive edge. Generic offerings in SEO or performance marketing are becoming commoditized. The future agency model will be defined by the ability to build defensible growth systems for clients in new, complex channels. Agencies that thrive will need to invest heavily in new capabilities.
Technical Proficiency: A deep understanding of how large language models gather and rank information.
Strategic Integration: The ability to weave new channels like AI search into a cohesive growth strategy, not just manage them in a silo.
Data-Driven Authority Building: Using analytics to identify and execute on opportunities to become a cited source.
For brands like Releaf, the value is no longer in outsourcing tasks, but in accessing a level of strategic expertise that is impractical to build in-house. Agencies that fail to develop such specialized skills will struggle to prove their value.
The strategy directly counters high acquisition costs and poor differentiation by creating a new, less-crowded channel for discovery and building a unique form of brand authority. While competitors are locked in expensive bidding wars on saturated ad platforms, the Releaf and upGrowth partnership focuses on establishing a 'first-mover' advantage in AI-driven search. This approach is a powerful solution to two pervasive D2C challenges. It shifts the marketing spend from renting attention on social media to owning a position of authority within AI ecosystems.
Problem - High CAC: An over-reliance on paid social and search ads leads to escalating costs.
Solution - GEO as a Lower-Cost Channel: Earning organic recommendations from AI engines like ChatGPT provides a sustainable stream of high-intent traffic at a lower long-term cost.
Problem - Low Differentiation: Many wellness brands use similar messaging and compete on price.
Solution - Authority as a Differentiator: Being the brand cited by an objective AI as the best solution for a customer's problem is a powerful and hard-to-copy differentiator.
This strategy is not just about finding new customers; it is about building a brand that is seen as the definitive answer in its category. Discover how this can reshape your brand's growth economics.
The core conflict arises because marketplaces and direct channels are often managed in silos, with competing goals and budgets. This leads to brand messaging inconsistencies and cannibalization. The integrated growth strategy designed by upGrowth Digital LLP for Releaf resolves this by treating all channels as part of a single, unified customer journey, reinforced by a foundational layer of AI visibility. The solution is to create a synergistic feedback loop where each channel strengthens the others. Instead of viewing Amazon and a brand website as competitors, this model uses them as complementary touchpoints.
Unified Creative Direction: The same core brand message and value propositions are used across the D2C site, Amazon pages, and performance ads.
Marketplace as a Trust Signal: Strong reviews and sales velocity on Amazon and Flipkart are leveraged as signals to improve brand authority for AI engines.
Direct Channel for Retention: The D2C site is positioned as the primary hub for community, deeper product information, and building long-term customer relationships.
This approach ensures that visibility gained in one area, such as through AI search, benefits conversions across all points of sale. See the full article for a breakdown of how to structure your teams to support this model.
Amol has helped catalyse business growth with his strategic & data-driven methodologies. With a decade of experience in the field of marketing, he has donned multiple hats, from channel optimization, data analytics and creative brand positioning to growth engineering and sales
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