A decade ago, when she was 49, Falguni Nayar left behind her investment banking career to launch beauty-and-fashion retailer Nykaa.
With backing from KKR’s Henry Kravis, Falguni Nayar has become India’s richest self-made woman thanks to her fast-growing fashion and beauty retailer.ndia's richest self-made woman - Falguni Nayar, who founded Mumbai-based beauty and fashion retailer Nykaa - has advice for women entrepreneurs:"Let the spotlight of your life be on you."
It’s been quite a successful journey so far. Nykaa, which sells 4,000 brands, from sprays to skin creams to skirts, all available online and through 102 stores across 45 Indian cities, first became profitable in the fiscal year ending March 2021. Eight months later, Nykaa went public, one of the rare start-ups to turn a profit before the IPO. That helps explain why the November listing was such a smash success: the $13 billion IPO was oversubscribed 82 times.
But she realized that she’d have to literally create the online beauty market in India from scratch. Nayar was up for the challenge, despite her lack of experience in beauty, tech or retailing. Her promise was to curate an array of authentic beauty products for an Indian audience that didn’t have access to international brands. But the initial months were tough. She kept a tight lid on costs – working out of her dad’s office in an industrial area.
The next year she rolled out in-house cosmetics brands for highlighters, foundations, nail enamels and the like –contracting with manufacturers in India and sometimes pricing the Nykaa brands less than the foreign imports. In the first nine months of fiscal 2022 ended December 31, 2021, Nykaa reported nearly one billion visits to its websites and mobile apps for beauty and fashion - up 78% from the same period in the prior year. It also processed more than 23 million orders in that period - up 80%.