Key Takeaways:
Indian beauty retailer Nykaa aims to make beauty accessible and educational for consumers.The omnichannel platform now hosts 4,000+ brands and has served 42 million customers across its 276+ physical stores and digitally.House of Nykaa, the platform’s private label and brand acquisition arm, delivered Rs 775 crore ($83.3 million) in GMV in Q3 2026.
India’s beauty market is entering a new, complex phase, where loyalty is emerging as the most valuable asset, and competition for the hyperexposed beauty consumer’s attention is intensifying. With a flurry of homegrown brands entering the market daily, and global beauty giants doubling down on India’s ambitions, the country’s beauty ecosystem is becoming one of the most competitive and attractive in the world. But while the race for beauty share has never been more competitive, one company seems to hold an undeniable lead: Nykaa.
According to a Reuters report, the fashion-beauty retailer expects net revenue to grow in the late 20% range in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, marking its fastest growth in three years, driven by steady demand in its beauty business and improvements across categories. Shares of the publicly listed company also rose to 3.9%.
Founded in 2012 by Falguni Nayar with a simple mission to make beauty accessible and educational for aspirational Indian consumers, the now publicly listed company has grown into India’s leading omnichannel beauty platform, having hosted more than 4,000 brands and serving more than 42 million customers to date. Today, Falguni Nayar’s son, Anchit Nayar, sits at the helm of the beauty business as CEO of beauty e-commerce, steering the platform through its next phase of growth as competition intensifies and India’s beauty landscape enters a new phase of experimentation, scale, and sophistication.
To understand how Nykaa continues to hold its formidable position in this rapidly evolving landscape, BeautyMatter caught up with Anchit Nayar to discuss how the omnichannel platform is evolving its strategy to stay ahead. In this exclusive interview, he shares the key strategic decisions, numbers, and metrics that highlight the giant’s unbeatable dominance and reveals what it takes to continue winning through every chapter of India’s beauty boom.
Building Beauty as a Category in India
Nayar believes that Nykaa’s edge comes from having built the beauty category in India.
“When we launched, overall consumption was nascent, but over the past decade, Nykaa has systematically solved for three purposes at scale—expanding availability, shaping consumer understanding, and building trust—to create a differentiated, full-stack beauty ecosystem,” he said.
Anchored in curation, content-led discovery, and omnichannel depth, Nykaa’s inventory-led model, with its stringent quality control, has been critical in driving trust in a market where authenticity suddenly seems to matter more than ever before. This is reflected in Nykaa’s growing luxury and premium portfolio.
“Nykaa is increasingly serving as the launchpad for marquee international brands such as Charlotte Tilbury, Chanel, Supergoop!, and a new wave of DTC brands,” explained Nayar. But trust is built through education, and discovery, therefore, has become our second moat,” he added.
Nykaa’s Content-Based Discovery Model
With beauty being a high-involvement category, where trust is built not through multiple transactions, but through education and deep consumer engagement, Nykaa early on placed content at the heart of its discovery strategy. The beauty retailer’s unique content-to-commerce model integrates creators, experts, and community at scale, driving informed discovery across multiple channels and platforms.
“Our 28,000+ affiliates and content creators generate over 1 billion impressions, while immersive formats like Nykaaland [the retailer’s beauty and lifestyle festival] and category-led brand experiences convert discovery into long-term engagement rather than one-time purchases,” said Nayar. This flywheel is further reinforced by scale and loyalty: As of Nykaa’s recent quarterly results (India’s Q3 FY2026), its cumulative beauty customer base stood at approximately 42 million, growing 30% year over year. Across fashion and beauty the platform has served 52 million customers, underscoring strong acquisition and engagement across platforms.
But while content-led discovery has been one of Nykaa’s most important pillars since its inception, today it is increasingly becoming behavior-led and commerce-integrated with community and education at its core.
“In a landscape flooded with short-form content and rapid brand launches, our focus is on simplifying choice, building trust, and upgrading consumer routines, rather than amplifying noise,” Nayar explained. Through a well-thought-out education-first strategy that shifts behavior from passive, doomscrolling-style browsing to more empowered decision-making, Nykaa is demystifying science, breaking down routines into intuitive steps, and creating new need states while encouraging cross-category adoption.
Nykaa is already seeing the impact of its education-first approach. According to Nayar, there’s been a 3.5x increase in skincare penetration enhancers, a 1.3x surge in demand for foundation and concealers, and a 1.4x increase in demand for setting sprays. Simultaneously, haircare routines are gaining traction, with higher repeat rates and new customer acquisition compared to their usual benchmarks.
From Category Creation to Ecosystem-Led Scale
Nykaa’s growth can be simplified through three distinct phases, each marking a significant shift in how beauty has evolved, grown, and become more accessible to a wider consumer base. The first phase was category creation, in which Nykaa introduced beauty to a market that was predominantly reliant on international purchases and where awareness was limited to mass drugstore offerings. “A decade ago, beauty in India was largely transactional and skewed towards color cosmetics,” explained Nayar.
The second phase was driven by assortment expansion and premiumization. As consumer awareness deepened, Nykaa moved well beyond color cosmetics and introduced haircare, skincare, and fragrances, while also building long-term strategic partnerships with global giants like Estée Lauder, L’Oréal, and Amorepacific. “Today, color contributes roughly a third of our gross merchandise value (GMV), with newer categories driving incremental growth. Our assortment has grown from 300 brands in 2015 to over 4,200 today, spanning fast-moving consumer goods, premium, luxury, and homegrown [beauty]” he said.
The third phase has been ecosystem-led scale. House of Nykaa, the private label and brand acquisition arm of Nykaa, features a portfolio of seven beauty brands. It has emerged as India’s second-largest homegrown beauty portfolio, with brands like Dot & Key, Nykaa Cosmetics, and Kay Beauty proving to be significant growth engines. Nayar revealed that in Q3 FY26, the House of Nykaa Beauty portfolio delivered Rs 775 crore ($83.3 million) GMV, reaching an annualized run rate of Rs 3,100 crore ($332 million). Homegrown brand Dot & Key scaled to an annualized GMV run rate of Rs 1,900 crore ($204 million), while Kay Beauty reached Rs 500 crore ($53.7 million), and Nykaa Cosmetics scaled to Rs 480 crore ($51.6 million).
“This journey is still early; India remains under-penetrated in beauty but as discretionary spending continues to grow, beauty is set to grow exponentially,” said Nayar. “While competition will accelerate this growth, our advantage lies in the trust, strategic partnerships, loyalty, and ecosystem depth we’ve built over the years.”
Winning Over Gen Z and Beating the Competition
While Nykaa serves both millennials and Gen Z, it understands that to truly sustain its leading position in an increasingly competitive landscape, it has to win over Gen Z. Accounting for 26% of India’s population and almost 50% of its consumption, this cohort is discovering beauty through peers, creators, and culture. With a skincare-obsessed, education-first mindset, India’s Gen Z population is shaped by Korean beauty and ingredient-led formulations. The response has been to tightly integrate creator storytelling, platform curation, and commerce.
Initiatives such as the Gen Z Campus Ambassador Programme, which focuses on empowering young creators through mentorship, exclusive workshops, and industry expertise, have generated 7,000+ pieces of creator content and reached over 45 million consumers in a single quarter, per Nayar.
While dedicated Gen Z–focused discovery experiences on the app are driving higher engagement and repeat behavior, Nykaa’s Gen Z penetration extends well beyond digital experiences and into immersive, community-led experiences that feed the growing Gen Z appetite for experiential beauty. After three editions, Nykaaland has emerged as a key touchpoint, most recently drawing more than 30,000 attendees, featuring 60 global and homegrown brands, and bringing together over 3,000 creators, experts, and celebrities.
Immersive initiatives such as this have further deepened Gen Z engagement and moved Nykaa from a platform for purchase to one for participation. By deepening emotional affinity and community building, this is resulting in stronger engagement and higher lifetime value. “The result is a discovery engine that compounds over time, driving stronger retention and sustained returns by turning cultural relevance and education into everyday beauty habits,” added Nayar.
What the Future Holds for Nykaa
With competition showing no signs of slowing down, forces such as AI, heightened consumer expectations, and new entrants are making the Indian beauty market more complex than ever before. As premiumization accelerates and Indian consumers become more hyperexposed and discerning, Nykaa’s next phase of growth hinges on how effectively it will be able to home in on its strengths across omnichannel, Gen Z engagement, strategic partnerships, and discovery that feels effortless.
The company is now focused on three strategic priorities, according to Nayar. First, capitalizing on that premiumization by introducing more global brands to India while accelerating high-growth categories like suncare, pharma, and wellness. Second, deepening its omnichannel strategy by expanding its physical retail footprint, strengthening hyperlocal fulfillment, and enabling next-day delivery for 70% of orders across major cities. And third, advancing an ecosystem-driven model through the Superstore By Nykaa app, aimed at bringing structure to India’s highly fragmented beauty retail landscape.
“All of this while transitioning into an AI-native enterprise where Gen AI drives tangible gains for us across personalization, efficiency, and customer experience,” Nayar concluded.
