India has a new richest self-made woman: How Falguni Nayar built her Rs 38,700 crore net worth

As the IIFL Wealth Hurun India rich list 2022 was released recently, India got a new richest self-made woman. Falguni Nayar, the 59-year-old cosmetics industry tycoon overtook Biocon’s Kiran Mazumdar Shaw to bag the top spot.

Nayar was also one of the top wealth gainers of the year as her net worth grew by a massive 345 percent to Rs 38,700 crore. The remarkable wealth creation took her from the 169th spot last year to the 33rd spot among the richest Indians in this year’s list.

In the span of just 5 years, Nayar’s Nykaa has seen its wealth soar by a spectacular 1,388 percent. Nayar entered the club of world’s wealthiest women last year in November 2021 after Nykaa’s successful IPO. She became only the seventh Indian woman in history to secure a place in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Nayar owns nearly half of Nykaa's shares, the valuation of which skyrocketed to $6.5 billion with Nykaa’s IPO boom. A year on, she has now become the richest self-made woman in India. Here’s the story of how she created her remarkable wealth.

How India’s richest self-made woman Falguni Nayar built her Rs 38,700 crore net worth?

Before her entrepreneurial adventure, Nayar had a 19-year-long stint with the Kotak Mahindra Group where she climbed the corporate ladder to end up at the top as company’s Managing Director. When she left the firm, she was among the top executives in its investment banking wing. Nayar is an alumni of the prestigious business school Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad.

While Nayar launched Nykaa in 2012 at the age of 50, she has had an illustrious career spanning 3 decades. However, she had planned to launch her own brand a long time ago. Interestingly, the name Nykaa is derived from the Sanskrit language and means “heroine”. The idea behind the company was enabling people to make a shift from buying cosmetics from brick-and-mortar stores to online.

In 2020, Nykaa became the first Indian unicorn to be headed by a woman. Nayar’s company currently has over 100 offline stores, mobile apps and websites and retails more than 2,000 international and domestic brands across its platforms.

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