Nykaa.com projects 10X growth in luxury portfolio

Talking about the company at an event organised in Kolkata recently, founder and CEO of Nykaa.com, Falguni Nayar told IBNS, ”Today we are India’s largest online retailer of beauty products with more than 450 brands and over 40,000 products.”

“In November 2016, Nykaa has introduced exclusive brands like Clinique and Estee Lauder on its Nykaa Luxe platform, which features a range of international and Indian luxury beauty brands. And this will be followed with the launch of M.A.C and Bobbi Brown, also part of Estee Lauder Companies Inc. in the next two months," she added.

This December Nykaa expects to launch its K-beauty brand Innisfree, the company said.

On being asked about the growth rate over 2016, Nayar said, ”This year we have seen a 3.5X growth and is currently on a net revenue run rate in excess of INR 250 crores.”

“We are expecting around INR 750 crores for 2017," she added.

In September 2016, the multi-brand portal raised INR 82.5 crore as part of its Series C funding through private equity and family offices of India's corporate CEOs - the key players being Sunil Kant Munjal, Chairman, Hero Corporate Service P Ltd., Family Office of Harsh Mariwala and TVS Shriram Growth Fund.

“Through the last four years, we have seen our customers become extremely savvy in their beauty picks. Interestingly, it is not only the urban customers who have become more demanding. We see orders coming in from many small towns for products like Toni & Guy Sea Salt Texturing Spray, or the NYX Pore Refiner," said the founder and CEO of the company.

She added, ”Our customers trust our offer and are not afraid to make the extra investment in their beauty regime.”

In order to give the customers a better understanding of the products, the store hosts a blog named “Luxe Letters” within the nykaa.com site, featuring weekly inputs from industry leaders and experts.

Speaking in context of the blog, Nayar said, ”We have a lot of content on the website, specially the blog Luxe Letters, where we educate the customers about proper usage of products and teach them solutions in relation to skin problems.”

On being asked about Nykaa’s largest selling products on a graph scale, she said, “Make-up products are the highest selling products overall, second skin and third is hair-related products.”

The Nykaa Beauty Bar event was attended by Konenica Banerjee, Suchandra Vaaniya, Alokananda Roy, Raj Lakshmi, Abhishek Dutta, Tejas Gandhi, Farah Zaiki, Gurbir Ahluwalia and many others.

(Reporting by Aninnya Sarkar)