Online beauty giant Nykaa plans to expand retail footprint to 200 stores

By

Isabelle Crossley

Published
Oct 15, 2018

India’s beauty giant Nykaa plans to reach a brick-and-mortar retail footprint of between 180 and 200 stores over the next four to five years and bring on around 20 new beauty brands this year to add to its current total of 850 brands.

With a planned investment of between Rs 20 crore to Rs 30 crore ($3 million to $4.5 million), Nykaa aims to greatly expand its brick-and-mortar retail presence across India. The brand also aims to increase its brand total from the current 850 to 870 this year and will also expand its men’s offerings.

Nykaa, which was founded in 2012 as an online multi-brand beauty retailer by Falguni Nayar, a former investment banker, has been steadily expanding offline.

The brand has two main retail formats for its offline stores: Nykaa Luxe and Nykaa On Trend. The Luxe stores span on average between 1,500 and 2,000 square-feet and are brand-led, while the On Trend stores at smaller at around 600 square-feet and are category-led. Store openings for both format are planned.

“When she started the brand, Falguni’s vision was to be synonymous with beauty in India,” Nykaa’s Head of Retail, Adwaita Nayar, told Salon International.

“We started as online retailers, but we knew from day one that we will open stores as well. For the first four years, we were solely online-focussed and after that we added two more business verticals – our private label business and physical store business. At present, we have around 300 SKUs of our private label and 22 stores.”

Brick-and-mortar stores currently contribute around ten percent of Nykaa’s overall revenue. With more store openings, this percentage is expected to go up.

“I think offline will eventually contribute about 15-20 percent of the whole business but online will remain the main focus,” said Nayar.