It has never been easier to start a beauty brand in India. A good product can find its first customers through Instagram and a creator recommendation can put it on thousands of wish lists. But what happens after the launch buzz fades? That is where the beauty story gets more complicated. Nykaa and L’Oréal’s BOLD have recently joined forces to back the next generation of Indian beauty and personal care brands. The market, now, is also revealing a less glamorous side of building a beauty business: getting noticed may be relatively easy, but turning that attention into repeat purchases and profitable scale is a much harder game. A few months back, Nykaa had also confirmed that it was in discussions with 82°E over a potential stake in Deepika Padukone’s skincare brand. And 82°E is hardly an isolated case. Similar moves have played out across the category.
But, with all these developments comes a larger question for India’s beauty market surfaces: what does it take for an independent beauty brand to move from just visibility to sustained scale?
The question is particularly relevant when explained with the example of 82°E. The brand reported revenue of ₹14.7 crore in FY25, down 30% from ₹21.2 crore a year earlier, while its net loss stood at ₹12.26 crore. Total expenditure fell sharply to ₹25.9 crore from ₹47.1 crore, while marketing expenditure declined to ₹4.4 crore from nearly ₹20 crore.
The numbers however, stand in contrast to the broader beauty market. Redseer estimates that India’s online beauty and personal care market reached around ₹56,000 crore in FY26, growing about 35% year-on-year. Yet only around 20 beauty brands, most housed under larger FMCG companies, are expected to cross ₹1,500 crore in revenue in FY26.
And exactly that difference between category growth and independent brand scale is now central to the beauty market business. There is ofcourse more consumers entering the market, more ways and platforms to discover products and more channels through which brands can sell. But the ability to capture that demand profitably has become a different challenge.
“India’s beauty market is expanding rapidly, but growth in the category does not automatically make the economics easier for independent brands,” says Vinay Babani, Executive Director at SRV Media. He points to the growth of online beauty alongside the expansion of channels such as quick commerce. Its share of online BPC doubled from around 9% in FY25 to 18% in FY26, according to Redseer. “The real economic question is whether the first purchase creates enough repeat behaviour and contribution margin to recover that acquisition cost,” Babani adds.
The challenge for brands is not simply getting consumers to notice them. Beauty discovery now happens across marketplaces, social media, creators, performance marketing, physical stores and quick-commerce platforms. Each can create a purchase, but each also adds another layer of competition for attention and margin.
Rheya Hiremath, Growth & Strategy Director at WIFE, puts the problem more simply, “I think the biggest change is that beauty has become much easier to launch, but much harder to build.” The consumer, she says, can discover a new beauty brand almost every day, creating a market where brands compete for the same attention and distribution. “The first purchase can be bought. The second one has to be earned.”
That second purchase is proving to be one of the most important tests of whether a beauty brand has a business or simply a successful launch. Marketing can generate trial, but repeat purchase determines whether the product has created enough value to bring consumers back without another heavy acquisition push.
“The brands that scale are not necessarily the ones that get the most attention. They are the ones that turn attention into memory, and memory into habit,” mentions Hiremath .
But for an independent brand, the path to scale is a little more complicated than this. A strong product still needs distribution, which in turn requires inventory and working capital. Wider availability requires strong relationships with marketplaces, retailers or quick-commerce platforms. And all of this has to happen while the brand continues investing in marketing and awareness.
Operational issues are also visible to the consumer, expresses Hiremath. A brand may have created enough demand to earn a repeat customer, but if the product is unavailable when that consumer wants to buy it again, the opportunity can easily go elsewhere. Distribution, therefore, is not only about reach; it can also influence retention.
Mihir Jain, Sales & Marketing Director of Insight Cosmetics, points to the same challenge from a brand’s perspective. “For us, awareness is only the starting point. The bigger challenge is turning that awareness into lasting consumer trust and relevance,” he says. With consumers discovering beauty products through creators, reviews, reels and recommendations, Jain says brands need to focus on understanding what Indian consumers need and translating those insights into products that deliver on performance, innovation and value. He adds that as brands expand across offline retail, marketplaces and quick commerce, maintaining consistency in quality, accessibility and consumer experience becomes equally important.
That is where a larger partner enters the equation.
The industry offers great examples of brands using larger companies to accelerate scale. HUL acquired a 90.5% stake in Minimalist for ₹2,706 crore, with the company identifying R&D and innovation, supply-chain optimisation, international expansion and offline distribution as key areas for synergy. HUL later said Minimalist had crossed an annual revenue run-rate of ₹850 crore.
Nykaa earlier has also used a portfolio approach. Its House of Nykaa includes brands such as Dot & Key and Kay Beauty, while the company has continued to build its owned and partnered beauty portfolio. Nykaa's own disclosures show the House of Nykaa portfolio recording 54% year-on-year GMV growth in Q2 FY26. Even Dot & Key grew from around ₹40 crore in GMV when it was acquired in FY21 to ₹1,790 crore in FY26. The Kay Beauty model is also instructive. The brand, launched by Katrina Kaif with Nykaa, operates as a joint venture in which Nykaa holds 51%. It reported revenue of ₹132.4 crore in FY25, up 50% year-on-year.
One interesting thing is that both Kay Beauty and 82°E are backed by strong celebrity presence. But that equity can help a brand command attention; not automatically translate into operational scale. A strategic partner can provide some of the infrastructure required to convert consumer interest into a larger business.
“For an independent beauty brand, capital is only one part of what a larger partner can provide. Distribution, procurement, technology, consumer data, retail access and operating capability can compress years of capability-building,” explains Babani.
While speaking to an independent beauty brand, it was quite clear that not all of them need to sell. Sargam dhawan Bhayana, Founder of The Botanical Theory states that the decision depends on where a brand is in its growth journey. “Yes, I think they are becoming a more realistic and attractive path as the market matures,” she says of strategic partnerships and acquisitions. But she adds that capital alone is not enough. The right partner should bring capabilities that accelerate the business while allowing the founder to protect product quality, brand identity and consumer trust.
For independent beauty brands, the question therefore may no longer be whether they can launch, find an audience or even generate early traction. It is whether they can build the repeat purchase, margins and distribution required to keep growing. And all of that without having to spend disproportionately more to acquire every next customer.
That is also why partnerships may come to look less like an admission of failure and more like a strategic choice for the next stage of growth. India’s beauty boom has made it easier than ever to launch a brand and find an audience. The harder task is building the distribution, repeat purchase and economics to keep that audience coming back. As the market matures, the real question for independent beauty brands may no longer be whether they can grow alone, but whether they should.
