You are Meera Kulkarni, head of digital marketing at Tulsi Naturals in Pune, India. In a single weekend 380 one- and two-star reviews have landed on your best-selling product, and before Tulsi says anything you have to decide what kind of event this is.
The situation
It is Tuesday, 16 June 2026. Tulsi sells cold-pressed oils, herbal supplements and ayurvedic skincare; it booked ₹220 crore in FY25, 68% of it through large online marketplaces. A single product, the cold-pressed coconut oil, brings in 31% of revenue. Its page carries 41,000 reviews at 4.6 stars: the verified-buyer programme you built, and the argument that won you every budget meeting.
On Saturday a consumer with 120,000 followers posted a three-minute video: an independent laboratory had supposedly found mineral oil in Tulsi's coconut oil. She named no laboratory and showed no report. Since then net sentiment on the page has gone from +71 to +12, the claim has reached 2.4 million impressions and is roughly doubling every twenty-four hours, and listing conversion has fallen from 6.8% to 4.1%, which at this rate costs ₹1.7 crore a month. The marketplace's ranking has already pushed the listing down the search results.
The 380 reviews are not alike. Some repeat almost word for word the same text. Others cite batch codes, describe a change in smell and ask what the company is going to do. Your community team coded a sample: 40% genuinely worried buyers, 60% coordinated pile-on. The community lead disputes her own team's coding: she thinks the copy-paste runs deeper. The quality head argues the opposite: if even 40% are real customers, it must be treated as a possible product failure until proven otherwise. Tulsi holds a current third-party laboratory certificate for the batch under attack and traceability for every batch, and has published neither.
A consumer-affairs journalist has asked for comment and will publish in 72 hours. Two marketplace category managers want a documented response within five business days, or a precautionary banner goes on the listing. ₹1.65 crore remains in June's digital budget.