Meet the Lady Behind One of the Leading Multi-brand Beauty Retailers in India

A few years ago, buying makeup and other beauty products was a great hassle! The branded stores were very few and mostly located in the tier I city malls. So if you ever managed to find the right lipstick shade or the highlighter at your local beauty store, you would keep on wondering whether it was an original piece or dupe.

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The case was no different for Amazon or Flipkart. And this is the problem which Nayar was looking to solve. Prior to incorporating Nykaa in 2012, Nayar was at Kotak Mahindra Capital as the Managing Director. She says, "I was itching to be an entrepreneur. As a part of my job, I met several entrepreneurs, their stories and conviction was truly inspiring. As I thought of ideas, I wanted to be a multi-brand retailer for beauty, a little on the lines of Sephora." The company is customer centric that means they do not push brands that provide them higher margin. "Also, we want to sell only genuine products, so unlike others we have our own warehouse," the former investment banker adds.

Today, Nykaa hosts more than 850 brands, which includes international brands like MAC, Bobbi Brown, Huda Beauty, Dear Packer, Wet N Wild, Estee Lauder and The Balm. The company employs more than 500 people and on an average, it dispatches two million products a month.

She further says, "The company is EBIDTA positive now and by March, we will be profit positive." Nykaa has also launched its in-house beauty and personal care brand. Additionally, it is now chasing omni channel presence. By end of FY2018, Nykaa will have 17 offline stores and by next year, it is planning to set up 50 more stores.

(This article was first published in the March issue of Entrepreneur Magazine. To subscribe, click here)