Nykaa to expand fashion business independent of beauty empire

By

Isabelle Crossley

Published
Jun 4, 2019

Nykaa’s nascent fashion arm is seeing 30 percent month-on-month growth and Nykaa aims to continue to expand it independently from its beauty business. 

In a bid to tap into India’s growing apparel market, Nykaa is amping up its fashion offerings and continuing to add brands to its multi-brand e-commerce store. Nykaa Fashion has a current total of 250 brands.

“We may get very good at fashion, very soon,” Nykaa’s founder and head Falguni Nayar told ET Bureau in an interview. “But there are problems to crack.”

Nayar’s daughter Adwaita Nayar is chief executive of the business’ fashion vertical which aims to cater to what the business identified as a group of women who shop only for fashion online. Adwaita Nayar oversees Nykaa Fashion’s current list of 250 clothing brands and is curating a mid-range mix of labels.

“It has to be affordable, yet high fashion and a premium aspirational website,” said Adwaita. “If you see the brand mix, we have a lot of top designers like Masaba, Ritu Kumar and an Anita Dongre but we will also have their pret lines or their slightly cheaper offerings like And, and Global Desi as well.” Most of the e-commerce site’s clothing retails around the Rs 2,000 ($28.87) to Rs 20,000 range. 

Nykaa Fashion has also recently acquired the brand 20Dresses and aims to use it to create a private clothing label for its e-commerce site.

“The vision is to have quite a few private brands in the space of apparel, lingerie, athleisure, accessories and more,” said Adwaita. “The 20Dresses team will help us achieve that.”

Brick-and-mortar stores for Nykaa Fashion are also on the cards but the business is keen to establish a strong customer base online before foraying into offline retail. Adwaita also stated that, even if Nykaa’s fashion and beauty arms become more linked in future, the two will not mix in offline retail.