Beauty e-tailers bank on luxury brands for robust growth

By

Maverick Martins

Published
Nov 9, 2016

India’s beauty e-commerce players including Nykaa and Purplle plan to add more luxury brands to strengthen their portfolios for a robust growth.

Mumbai-based Nykaa will add American cosmetic giant Estee Lauder’s brands, including MAC, Bobbi Brown, Clinique and Tom Ford, while another e-tailer Purplle is in advanced talks to bring a host of premier brands, like Rimmel London, Sally Hansen and Kama, among others, on its platform.

“(Estee Lauder) has agreed to bring all its brands on our site and, all put together, we will have 3,500 SKUs (stock keeping units),” said Falguni Nayar, founder of Nykaa.

“Luxury forms 8% of our revenue pie. In the next 12 months, Nykaa will grow at 3-times but our luxury business alone will grow ten-times,” Nayar told the Economic Times.

The platform’s luxury brand portfolio includes Kama Ayurveda, Kiehl’s Lancome, Ciate, Chloe and Truefit & Hill, among others.
 
Purplle currently features luxury brands only in its perfume category, which forms 15-16% of its revenue share.

“We are in talks to bring MAC and Estee Lauder online by January or February 2017. The other brand that will feature on our website in two months is Inglot,” said Manish Taneja, cofounder of Purplle.

The platform claims a strong revenue churn in its luxury-based dermatology cosmetics segment through brands such as Vichy, La Roche-Posay and Avene.

Although these luxury brands will not be offered on discount on these marketplaces, it hasn’t deterred companies from fixing robust targets for the coming year.