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Context is everything.
Detailed stories on technology startups, business and economic current affairs.
Detailed stories on technology startups, business and economic current affairs.
The beauty e-commerce startup may be a new-age tech business like Zomato or Paytm, but a closer look at the company tells you that it is as traditional as they come.
Editor's note: To be able to legally, legitimately do the inventory model, we stayed away from foreign money and we raised only domestic funding. We have a very differentiated business model and we truly believe in it. In beauty you need to be inventory-led." That quote, from a 2017 interview, gives a window to Falguni Nayar's entire approach to building Nykaa, the startup that dominates beauty and personal care retail online in India today. Every prominent e-commerce venture—from the grand successes to the miserable failures—bulked up on external capital, landing them in a morass of regulations around foreign investment in e-commerce. As companies with significant foreign funding, none could technically hold inventory of what they wanted to sell, from smartphones to jeans. Everyone either had to act as an online marketplace for other sellers, or contort themselves into complex corporate structures involving multiple entities, subsidiaries and affiliates to hold their own stock and sell. Nykaa, funded in its early years purely on money from Nayar herself, who was a long-time investment banker before, and her husband Sanjay, who was one of the …
The ecommerce platform will be hard-pressed to justify its estimated $7-8 billion valuation—up nearly 2x from just 10 months ago—at a time of ho-hum growth and flagging profitability.
Both beauty and personal care companies just delivered their June-quarter results. Their numbers hide more than they reveal.
The 17-year-old eyewear company is finally approaching the public markets. Its stellar numbers and international footprint set it apart.
