From Nykaa to Purplle, Sugar to Plum: India’s US$27 billion beauty industry is booming, driven by influencers, online shoppers

Falguni Nayar, who founded India’s leading cosmetics e-commerce company Nykaa in 2012, is now the country’s wealthiest self-made woman billionaire

Marketing analysts attribute the beauty boom to millions of new internet users, online influencers and the surge in popularity of e-commerce amid the pandemic

Reading Time:5 minutes

Falguni Nayar, managing director and CEO of Nykaa. Photo: AFP

Published: 8:59am, 4 Jan 2022Updated: 9:53am, 4 Jan 2022

Every Sunday Sunita Sharma, 39, her daughter Priti and sister-in-law Aarti huddle around her phone for two hours after wrapping up their household chores to watch make-up tutorials by leading beauty influencers on YouTube.

“We take notes, shop online for some of the affordable products they recommend, experiment with them and then get each other’s feedback. In today’s socially competitive environment, it’s vital to look good,” explains Sunita, a schoolteacher based in Noida, a town in India’s northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

Hundreds of thousands of upper-middle and middle-class Indian women like the Sharmas are increasingly joining an exponentially growing consumer base for India’s massive beauty and personal care product market. Currently valued at US$26.8 billion, the industry is poised to surge to US$37.2 billion by 2025 according to Statista, a consumer data company, which forecasts it will cater to 122 million online beauty shoppers by that year.

Nykaa, the runaway success in India’s online beauty space, also operates a chain of bricks-and-mortar retail outlets. Photo: AFP

Marketing analysts attribute this beauty boom to the millions of Indian internet users who have gone online for the first time in recent years on the back of cheaper mobile data plans, coupled with the surge in popularity of e-commerce amid the pandemic.

While Amazon and Walmart-controlled Flipkart have benefited from this surge in demand for fashion, health, beauty and personal care items, home-grown brands such as fashion e-commerce platform Myntra have also seen significant growth.

Manish Taneja, CEO and co-founder of Indian beauty and personal care brand Purplle, also attributes the beauty industry’s growth to higher disposable incomes and growing aspirations. “Earlier, consumers had no access to learning about beauty regimes. But the social media landscape has changed that game. Now anyone from a villager to a city dweller can log onto different online channels to get information about the latest products and how to use them and look good.”