She quit her job at a big investment bank to be the Nykaa of her own story. In a span of seven years, Falguni Nayar has built nykaa.com into the go-to web-store for women who are interested in beauty products and fashion.

Growing between 80 and 100 percent each year, the company last year clocked revenues of Rs 1,200 crore against a valuation of Rs 5,000 crore.

Although heavy discounting and competition have had its toll on the company’s pure earnings margins, languishing at a mere 5 to 7 percent, Nayar is hopeful of improving it to 10 percent ‘eventually’.

That said, the fashion market in India’s e-commerce space has had its own share of churn in recent years. Flipkart bought Myntra in 2014, Myntra acquired Jabong in 2016 and Walmart bought Flipkart in 2018.

In all this, although there were e-commerce platforms focusing exclusively on women, Nayar says she spotted the opportunity as the Indian online beauty market continued to be sparse and fragmented. Currently, at single digits, Nayar piggybacks the US example to hope that her private label (launched two years ago) would add 20 percent to the company’s overall revenue. Probably, it is these numbers coupled with the meteoric doubling of revenues year-on-year that coaxed private equity firm TPG Capital to invest Rs 100 crore in the company.

Nayar, with this cash in hand, is now looking to expand her footprint. She says Nykaa’s current store count of 39 would go up to 40 in the near future with an eventual target of a 180.

First Published:Jun 4, 2019 2:43 PM IST