Falguni Nayar and Family

Falguni Nayar founded Nykaa at 50 with a theory that Indian women would buy premium cosmetics online if someone built the right destination.

She founded Nykaa in 2012 after two decades as an investment banker at Kotak Mahindra. The business she started was an online beauty retail platform at a time when most premium cosmetics and skincare brands in India were sold through department stores or brand boutiques with limited geographic reach. Nykaa aggregated those brands in a single digital destination, gave consumers access to product discovery and reviews, and solved the logistics of last-mile delivery for fragile, high-value items.

The company's IPO in 2021 was one of the most widely covered of the year, valuing a business that had been profitable and growing without the cash-burn approach that characterised most consumer internet companies of the era. Adwaita Nayar, who runs the fashion business, and Anchit Nayar, who oversees beauty commerce and technology, are now leading the company's next phase as their mother transitions to a more strategic role. The challenge at current scale is sustaining growth in online beauty while physical retail expansion adds costs, and managing the tension between a premium positioning and the pressure to extend into more accessible price points.