Brands race to crack the AI discovery code

The shift from search to conversations is spawning a new category of commerce startups

June 29, 2026 10:49 IST

Brands are increasingly investing in generative engine optimisation (GEO) to improve their visibility and recommendations across AI assistants such as ChatGPT and Gemini.

Every time a shopper asks ChatGPT which running shoe to buy, Gemini to recommend a frozen meal, or Claude to suggest a skincare product, an invisible battle is playing out among brands. Unlike Google search, where dozens of results compete for attention, AI assistants typically recommend only a handful of products. For brands that fail to make that shortlist, it is the digital equivalent of disappearing from the shelf altogether.

That shift in consumer discovery is quietly creating an entirely new layer of commerce infrastructure. As conversational AI increasingly becomes the first stop for shopping decisions, companies are scrambling to figure out how to make their products surface inside ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and other AI assistants. The challenge is spawning a new generation of startups that promise to do for AI what search engine optimisation (SEO) firms once did for Google: help brands become visible, trusted and recommended by large language models.

The urgency is not misplaced. According to industry estimates, ChatGPT already accounts for about 20% of Walmart’s referral traffic, over 20% of Etsy’s, nearly 15% of Target’s and around 10% of eBay’s. AI agents drove nearly $262 billion worth of global orders during the 2025 holiday season, while for many brands, ChatGPT, Gemini and Google’s AI Mode already contribute close to 10% of organic traffic. Indian consumer brands are beginning to see a similar trend emerge and are moving early in the hope of securing an advantage before AI-led shopping becomes mainstream.

“Brands spent years learning how to show up on Google. Nobody taught them how to show up on AI. And that’s exactly where they are stuck,” Brijesh Damodaran Nair, managing partner at Auxano Capital, which closely tracks developments in artificial intelligence, told Fe. “If you ask your SEO agency today to help you show up when someone asks AI for a product recommendation, they won’t know what to tell you. This is genuinely new ground for the old vendors.”

That gap is giving rise to startups such as Trucommerce, Rankly, Prava, Rye and Firmly, which specialise in what the industry is beginning to call generative engine optimisation, or GEO. Their role is less about gaming algorithms and more about helping brands understand whether AI assistants recommend them at all, why competitors are being suggested instead, how their products are being described and how much traffic AI platforms are sending their way. Venture investors have started tracking the emerging category as a potential new commerce infrastructure layer, with firms in both India and the US evaluating startups operating in the space.

For brands, the concern extends beyond visibility. “Brands don’t know who they are losing to; a competitor can be the default recommendation in their category and they would have no idea,” said Umang Chhaparia, co-founder of Trucommerce AI, whose clients include ITC’s Savlon and MasterChef, Puma, AJio and Amazon. “They also have less control over how AI describes them because it may be pulling information from reviews and third-party lists instead of the brand’s own messaging.”

Industry executives say brands are spending anywhere between Rs 15 lakh and Rs 60 lakh on six-month engagements to solve that problem, with many renewing contracts after seeing measurable results. Besides helping brands rewrite product information in formats AI systems can better understand, these firms also track AI referral traffic and monitor where recommendations originate, something conventional web analytics tools do not adequately capture.

For the brands it tracks, Trucommerce says AI assistants now account for around 10% of organic traffic, while AI referral traffic has grown 400-700% over the past year. The influence, however, stretches well beyond the clicks that brands can measure. Many consumers begin their product research on ChatGPT before completing purchases on marketplaces such as Amazon, Myntra or Blinkit, making AI’s role in buying decisions significantly larger than visible referral traffic suggests. Chhaparia cited ITC MasterChef as an example, saying the frozen foods brand moved into the top three recommendations across ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity within two months of adopting the company’s platform.

For startups building this new layer, the opportunity extends beyond marketing. “AI is shaping up to be one of the best user acquisition channels, better than paid ads. With paid ads, the day you cut spends, your sales drop. AI traffic is organic,” Tushar K, founder of Rankly, said. As AI assistants increasingly become the gateway through which consumers discover products, brands may soon have to optimise not just for search engines, but for conversations. Just as SEO became indispensable in the Google era, generative engine optimisation is shaping up to become an essential discipline in the AI economy.

This article was first uploaded on June twenty-nine, twenty twenty-six, at forty-nine minutes past ten in the morning.