PremiumOn Day 2 of Hindustan Times Leadership Summit (HTLS) 2022, Falguni Nayar, the founder and CEO of Nykaa, spoke with Sruthijith KK, Editor in Chief of Mint, on the journey of the online retailer and its future plans. In 2012, Falguni Nayar quit her 25-year career in finance to chase her dream of building a premier online retailer for beauty and wellness. Today, Nykaa is one of India’s top online destination for beauty products. Nayar, who holds a post-graduate diploma in management from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, also serves on the board of a number of blue chip companies.
- "I also have to admit that entrepreneurial journeys are not easy, and especially early days are characterised by a lot of pain points, I think getting the technology enabled platforms, so getting the technology right, were the initial issues, then getting the scale and as they call it, you know," Nayar said.
- Nayar spoke about understanding the global brands that we are bringing into the country and making them within India like getting a brand into the country, getting it accepted by Indian consumers, and more.
- Our “secret sauce" comes from our customers trusting us to bring them the best of what the world has to offer, the Nykaa CEO said.
- And as I looked at it, I realised that beauty was a very nascent industry in a geographically diverse country like India, says Nayar.
- Speaking on how she started off, Nayar said, "So I thought if we were to marry e commerce with the problems of Indian beauty industry, and come up with being a multi brand retailer that is focused on delivering ecommerce experience with E commerce would be the right way to go. So that's how we started off and I think that was the right bet."
- “I had a lot of consumers tell me that it is very hard to buy beauty products online but it was thanks to the Millennium Millennial consumers who are very uh very open to social media and being influenced online and also purchasing online."
- "I was one of the few night people who went and tried to convince all the luxury Beauty guys that in India luxury and mass need to be sold on the same platform."
- “They were looking to with little more stable uh salary and they were ready to join a startup like Nyka and of course many of them were from some of the best institutions like IIM Ahmedabad, IIT Bombay or IIT Delhi and I used to ask them that uh you know don't you get scared now you're doing or joining a startup as a third job and aren't you."
- Startup experience is always very very valuable, the Nykaa CEO says.
- “We did the IPO for UTV you know and when Ronnie Screwvala used to say that I want to build Disney like studio in India no one believed him but he did do that eventually."
- "What tech platform to use to build and our e-commerce and also and also in terms of how much to spend on our technology."
- Nayar believes that when you want to do something the the knowledge comes to you and I I absorb the knowledge I was very I used to drive myself to do a lot of external meetings.
- “No no you can't have a relatively smooth sail. I think the point is the personality. I am not a personality who feels this can’t work."
- Digital businesses can go grow very rapidly and we must believe in the growth, Nayar says.
- "In terms of number of orders also I think we must be doing close to two million orders a month."
- “From early days we believed in both Omni Channel and hence we have we want customers to find us where they want us."
- "So already our Global Brands account for 13 of our Western Wear offering and similarly When we said let's bring uh hidden gems you know those brands from Calcutta that Mumbai can't get or Mumbai brands that Calcutta can't get or Delhi Brands it's South can't get and we call them hidden gems and we started promoting those on our website those also now account for about eight percent of our business."
- Almost 60% of our demand is coming from non-metrocities, Nayar says.
- "From very day one I was trying to build businesses that fall into the right unit economics and hence eventually they'll have a earnings potential and a model that will be interesting to the investor so my in-depth experience of investors and what they want you know it's like what do women want similar what do investors want so I think Nykaa as at Nykaa I truly understand that."
- "For women there are no I mean there are no glass ceilings I think in my opinion women need to want it for themselves they need to want to dream for themselves and want a certain career aspiration."
- “Women empowerment has to start at home and that's where they need to be very well supported I'm very fortunate that I've had that I've had a very supportive family."
- "We have partnered with IIM Ahmedabad my alma mater to start a chair uh to find a chair where we will do research we will do collaboration as well as we do uh you know um education supporting uh those fields of fulfills of interest to me."
- "We love investing in startups so I think both first at Nykaa are partnering with Estee Lauder we have a program called Beauty and you which is going to identify a great upcoming Beauty businesses."
- On beauty being an inflation-proof business, she says, “Yes, it's been known I mean they have coin terms like lipstick index which means that during times of recession and depression the consumption of beauty products does not suffer because they call them small luxuries so when consumers can't afford big luxuries like travel or jewellery they're happy with a nice color of a lipstick."
- “I'm just very delighted that my it was a business that I was starting and I'm delighted that my both my children choose to join me."