When a traveller opens ChatGPT and types "best luggage brand in India" — who shows up?
Not the brand with the best product. Not the brand with the biggest marketing budget. The brand with the strongest AI presence.
We ran a GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) audit on five Indian D2C travel brands — Mokobara, Uppercase, Eume, Nasher Miles, and Assembly — to find out exactly who that is. The methodology: 25 non-branded shopping-intent queries, run across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews, generating 125 data points per brand and 625 total across the audit.
Here's what the data says.
The Leaderboard
| Brand | Overall Mention Rate | Best Platform | Worst Platform | Top AI Framing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mokobara | 70% | Gemini (96%) | Perplexity (36%) | Design-forward |
| Uppercase | 50% | Google AI Overviews (76%) | Perplexity (32%) | Design-forward |
| Eume | 35% | Perplexity (72%) | Gemini (0%) | Durable / reliable |
| Nasher Miles | 33% | ChatGPT (48%) | Google (20%) | Design-forward |
| Assembly | 22% | ChatGPT (48%) | Claude / Perplexity (8%) | Functional features |
The headline finding: Mokobara is the clear leader with a 70% overall mention rate — more than three times Assembly's 22%. But the more interesting story is in the platform-level variance. Every brand has a dramatically different profile across the five platforms, and each divergence points to a specific, addressable content gap.
Finding 1: Mokobara has a commanding lead — but it's not invincible
70% overall mention rate across 625 AI responses is a strong number. Mokobara's design-forward positioning has become category-defining: the "design-forward" framing tag appeared 73 times across all responses — no other brand comes close.
The platform breakdown is where it gets interesting.
| Platform | Mention Rate | Avg Position |
|---|---|---|
| Gemini | 96% | #2.5 |
| Claude | 72% | #2.8 |
| ChatGPT | 68% | #1.2 |
| Google AI Overviews | 68% | #3.2 |
| Perplexity | 36% | #4.1 |
On Gemini, Mokobara is mentioned in 96% of all queries — essentially every relevant AI conversation. On Perplexity, that drops to 36%. That's a 60-point gap, and it has a specific explanation: Perplexity rewards spec-heavy, citation-rich, feature-forward content. Mokobara's content has built exceptional editorial and lifestyle coverage (driving Gemini and Claude performance) but hasn't built equivalent depth in the product specification and review content that Perplexity's citation model rewards.
The competitive read: Mokobara has won the design conversation completely. It hasn't won the durability, business travel, or tech-specs conversation. Those are the gaps where every other brand has an opening — and where Uppercase is making the most progress.
Finding 2: Uppercase is the most dangerous challenger
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Uppercase's 50% overall mention rate undersells what the data actually shows.
Google AI Overviews mentions Uppercase 76% of the time — the highest platform-specific rate of any D2C brand in this audit, including Mokobara.
Why does this matter? Google AI Overviews is the platform most directly tied to purchase intent. When someone searches on Google (still the dominant search tool by volume in India) and an AI Overview appears above the blue links, Uppercase is getting recommended more than any other Indian D2C brand.
Uppercase is also the only brand in this audit with a credible, consistently applied "eco / sustainable" framing in AI responses. That tag appeared 34 times — compared to near-zero for Mokobara, Nasher Miles, and Assembly. In a market where sustainability is increasingly a genuine purchase driver, Uppercase owns an uncontested position.
| Platform | Mention Rate | Signal |
|---|---|---|
| Google AI Overviews | 76% | SEO investment paying GEO dividends |
| Claude | 52% | Best Claude rate in the audit |
| Gemini | 44% | Solid editorial presence |
| ChatGPT | 48% | Present but avg position #6 — not leading |
| Perplexity | 32% | Feature content is the gap |
The competitive read: Uppercase is 18 months of focused content execution away from closing the gap on Mokobara. The SEO infrastructure is there. The editorial content quality is there. The gap is Perplexity (feature/spec content) and ChatGPT average position.
Finding 3: Eume has the most unusual GEO profile in the audit
Eume is completely absent on Gemini. Zero percent. Not a single mention across 25 queries.
Meanwhile, Perplexity mentions Eume 72% of the time — the highest Perplexity rate of any brand in this audit.
That's a 72-percentage-point divergence between two major platforms. This is the most striking platform variance we've seen, and it tells a precise story.
| Platform | Mention Rate |
|---|---|
| Perplexity | 72% |
| Google AI Overviews | 44% |
| ChatGPT | 48% |
| Claude | 12% |
| Gemini | 0% |
Eume's content lives in tech and feature-review publications — detailed spec breakdowns, USB charging features, anti-theft locks, polycarbonate ratings. Perplexity's citation model loves exactly this content. But Eume hasn't crossed over into the editorial lifestyle content that feeds Gemini — mainstream travel magazines, premium consumer publications, the kind of coverage that says "this brand is culturally relevant, not just technically capable."
The practical implication: Eume is winning with buyers who research on Perplexity (typically more research-oriented, higher purchase intent) but completely invisible to Gemini's audience (broader consumer base). One Condé Nast Traveller India or GQ feature would fundamentally change this profile.
Finding 4: Nasher Miles is underperforming where it matters most
Nasher Miles scores 100% on Category Discovery queries and 100% on Price & Value queries. The brand has legitimate awareness.
The critical gap is Problem-Solving queries — when buyers ask:
- "Which luggage brand makes bags that don't break after a few flights?"
- "I travel every week for work — which brand should I invest in?"
- "Best luggage for style and functionality for business travel?"
Nasher Miles scores 25% mention rate on these queries — the lowest of any intent category, lower than all competitors.
This is the highest-urgency purchase intent cluster in the entire query bank. Buyers searching these queries have a specific problem right now and are ready to buy. Nasher Miles' doorstep warranty and polycarbonate durability claims are directly relevant — but the content isn't built or indexed in a way that AI platforms can surface it.
The fix is a specific content brief: build the "durability guarantee" content play — warranty stories, drop-test content, repair case studies, "still working after 3 years" customer stories. These directly feed problem-solving queries that are currently converting to Samsonite.
Finding 5: Assembly has one owned territory — and needs to build everything from there
Assembly's 22% overall mention rate is the lowest in the audit. Its visibility is concentrated in ChatGPT (48%) and Gemini (36%), while Claude (8%), Perplexity (8%), and Google AI Overviews (12%) barely register it.
But buried in the data: "organisation and compartments" is Assembly's only clearly owned attribute in AI responses. When buyers ask "which luggage brand has the best organisation and compartments?" — Assembly appears in 3 out of 5 LLMs.
More importantly, no other brand in this audit is meaningfully claiming this territory. Not Mokobara, not Uppercase, not Samsonite. The "smart organisation" narrative is completely uncontested at scale.
Assembly has a genuine differentiation platform that's going unclaimed. If it builds content infrastructure around packing guides, organisation systems, comparison content, and structured FAQ content — it can own an intent cluster that has no incumbent.
The meta-finding: different platforms, different content diets
Gemini rewards editorial and lifestyle content. Mainstream publications, consumer magazines, travel media.
Perplexity rewards citation-heavy, real-time indexed content. Product spec pages, comparison tables, review aggregators.
Google AI Overviews correlates most closely with traditional SEO. Strong SEO infrastructure pays GEO dividends here.
ChatGPT draws from broad training data. Width of internet coverage matters.
Claude weights authoritative, long-form sources. Quality over quantity.
Brands optimising for one platform and ignoring the others are leaving platform-specific visibility entirely to competitors.
What this means for GEO strategy
Three implications for any D2C brand:
1. Platform-specific content gaps are the actionable insight. The gap between your Perplexity performance and your Gemini performance tells you specifically what to create.
2. Framing ownership is more durable than mention rate. "Design-forward" is structurally associated with Mokobara. "Eco/sustainable" belongs to Uppercase. These aren't marketing claims — they're AI-indexed associations that take time and deliberate content strategy to build.
3. The first brand to build content depth in underserved intent clusters wins. Problem-solving queries are significantly underserved across the entire category. Any D2C brand that builds a focused content play around "best luggage for frequent travellers" has a clear path to owning that cluster before a competitor notices.
Methodology
All 25 queries were strictly non-branded. Every query was written from the perspective of a consumer who hasn't yet decided on a brand. Each query was run across 5 LLMs: ChatGPT (GPT-4o), Gemini (1.5 Pro), Claude (Sonnet 4), Perplexity (Sonar), and Google AI Overviews (manual). Data collected February 2026.
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