Page 40 - Forbes - Asia (October 2019)

ASIA’S POWER BUSINESSWOMEN

FALGUNI NAYAR, 56
Founder and CEO, Nykaa
INDIA

After nearly two decades helping entrepreneurs as an
investment banker, Nayar was raring to start a business of
her own. “I wanted to experience the journey of creating
something from scratch,” says Nayar. So in 2012, Nayar
quit her job at Kotak Investment Banking, invested $2 mil-
lion and launched beauty retailer Nykaa. Today, Nykaa has
46 stores across India and 45 million visitors a month to
its website and app. While the company has yet to break
even, sales almost doubled in the year ended March 31, to
an estimated $180 million.
Nykaa has raised $51 million in funding and, in April,
TPG Growth invested $14.4 million for an undisclosed
stake in a deal that valued Nykaa at $724 million. Nayar
and her family still control more than 50% of the com-
pany. (Husband Sanjay Nayar, CEO of U.S. private equity
giant KKR’s India operations, has invested in Nykaa in his
personal capacity.)
“Falguni’s grasp over the entirety of her business—from
the minute aspects of operations to big-picture finance—is
extremely unique, and very rare for a startup founder and
entrepreneur,” says Angad Banga, chief investment officer
for the family office of Hong-Kong based commodities bil-
lionaire Harindarpal Singh Banga. The Banga family office
owns 10% of Nykaa.
Gurgaon, India-based consulting firm Technopak
predicts that rising incomes among younger Indians will
almost double the country’s beauty and personal care
market, to $23 billion, by 2023. “Beauty is a low footprint
category and the unit value is very high,” says Arvind Sing-
hal, Technopak’s chairman and managing director.
Nayar spent 19 years at Kotak, setting up its securities
operations in the U.S. and U.K. before spearheading IPOs
back in India. Even as a veteran banker, though, Nayar
found fundraising for Nykaa a challenge. “I’d get meetings
because of our backgrounds,” she says, “but meetings
didn’t always mean money. Investors wouldn’t believe in
what I was saying.”
“I didn’t know who she was,” recalls Rishabh Mariwala,
managing director of another investor, Sharrp Ventures,
the family office of Indian consumer goods billionaire
Harsh Mariwala. (Rishabh also runs a bath and body prod-
ucts company that sells on Nykaa and other outlets.) “But
after I interacted with her, I understood her conviction.”
Nayar started Nykaa as an online-only business. That
allowed her to minimize overhead while introducing to In-
dia an endless aisle of international products such as Estée
Lauder, Clinique and Bobbi Brown. But she soon realized KARAN NEVATIA FOR FORBES ASIA
customers wanted to touch and try products before buy-
ing them. So in 2015, she opened her first brick-and-mor-
tar store in Delhi. Nykaa now sells 1,300 brands, up from
just 350 in 2015, and 130,000 products. Nykaa has also
launched its own fashion line. —Anuradha Raghunathan

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