Beauty and its beast of a debut

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Hello readers,

Two weeks ago, I made my first unboxing video. Not because I wanted to put it up online, but because I was secretly petrified that I’d find a soap bar instead of the smartphone I ordered – recent news about such an event had riled up my cautious side. (Happy to report I didn’t get anything that I hadn’t ordered.)

I have a fixed set of ecommerce sites I frequent, switching between them depending on factors such as pricing, availability, and delivery timelines. But when it comes to anything skincare-related, it’s Nykaa all the way for me and my friends in India. That’s a category no one wants to risk getting products that aren’t their most authentic selves.

Despite sites such as Amazon offering lower prices for an array of beauty products, Nykaa has managed to build quite a following in India – there’s even a Twitter thread to decipher the fashion e-tailer’s popularity.

Founded by ex-investment banker Falguni Nayar, Nykaa’s initial public offering, which could propel its valuation to US$7.1 billion, stands out for a lot more reasons – all of which we’ve gone into in our premium article.

Today we look at,

• What’s in Nykaa’s pre-IPO presentation
• A US$100 million fund for D2C brands
• Other newsy highlights such as Indonesian travel startup Tiket likely to go public next year, and India’s Paytm all set for its IPO

Premium summary

A beauteous listing

Image credit: Timmy Loen

Founded in 2012, Nykaa is the youngest unicorn to file for a public listing in India this year. It’s also one of the few IPO-bound Indian startups that is profitable. Here are some of the things about Nykaa that caught our eye:

• A big piece of the pie: The India-based fashion and beauty e-tailer is the most visited website among beauty-only retailers in India. The company holds about 30% of the country’s market share in beauty products.

• Glamorizing ecommerce: The company, which has a number of brick-and-mortar stores besides its online platform, has posted a nearly 40% year-on-year jump in revenue from operations, hitting US$325 million in the financial year ended (FYE) March 2021.

• Non-metro markets shine: Nykaa’s sales from India’s Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets are on the rise. Their contribution to Nykaa’s gross merchandise value sales has collectively gone up from 56.9% in FYE 2019 to 64% in FYE 2021.

All aboard the D2C bandwagon