About the company
Nykaa is a wellness and beauty e-commerce platform that sells branded products under wide categories of skincare, makeup, luxury products, fragrances, hair care, bath & body products for men and women. The differentiating factor of Nykaa from other beauty e-commerce businesses is their motive to help Indian women make the best beauty and wellness choices in terms of services, products, tools etc. They have a huge collection of fresh and cent percent genuine products and services that deliver them across India.
They claim to offer about 300 brands and over 20,000 products in this category. The portal runs on an inventory-based model and has a storehouse in Mumbai. It has successfully established strong partnerships with courier companies in order to offer services across 900 plus cities and 9,000 zip codes.
How Nykaa came into being
Founded by investment-banker-turned entrepreneur Falguni Nayar and her husband Sanjay Nayar in 2012, $2 million were invested in the company. The Nayars controlled about 95% of the stakes in it.
Business Objective
Falguni Nayar, ex-MD, Kotak Mahindra Bank founded Nykaa.com when she was searching for various business options. It was then she noticed that unlike other countries like Europe, France, and Japan where there are a number of stores offering beauty products and fragrances, there is hardly any in India. Though the demand for such outlets was high but there were no apt retail formats in India.
In order to provide beauty products and services to Indian men and women at the best possible rates, Nykaa was set up.
Strategies adopted by Nykaa
1. Prime focus of the company has been content
They feel there are 3 types of customers:
- Customers who are short on time: For them, e-commerce is feasible and convenient.
- Customers who are beauty experts: They know what they are going to buy.
- Makeup or beauty newbies: They don’t know what they are looking for.
This is the reason that company imparts a lot of education on the website about makeup and alike via its online magazine “Beauty Book”.
2. YouTube Channel
The Company also has its YouTube channel called Nykaa TV on which they have a number of how-to videos with an aim to impart knowledge.
3. Discount coupons and offers
There are various discount coupons and offers given by the company to its customers along with additional offers provided by the company at the time of the festivals.
4. Leveraging social media platforms
In order to effectively generate lead and launch various offers to convert them into sales, Nykaa uses social media platform.
- Currently, the Facebook business page has more than 4 lacs fan and Twitter account has 4,500 plus followers. Along with using attractive and lucrative contents and videos posted frequently, the company successfully leverages the social media platforms.
- Nykaa’s YouTube page has around 3k subscribers.
- It’s Pinterest has 386 followers.
- Instagram has more than 16.9k followers. Instagram followers are increasing day by day which indicates that Nykaa has been successful in providing a great shopping experience to its customers.
5. Nykaa experts
Along with having videos and content on the company’s product pages, they also have Nykaa Decodes wherein articles are published and experts answer the queries of the users online.
6. Nykaa’s retail shop
Nykaa has launched its first ever offline retail store at T-3, IGI Airport, New Delhi.
Results Achieved
- In a short duration of time, the company has witnessed a very good momentum in terms of revenues and sales. The company s two-year-old and the gross margins are double or triple the levels that are already there in the market.
- Also, the company has been very active on most digital platforms like Google, Facebook etc.
- The company has also partnered with Femina in order to launch Nykaa Femina Beauty Awards, an annual award show for beauty products.
- The company also has 50k unique visitors per month. Out of which, 80% are women. This number is expected to grow because of both physical retail business and online presence.
Future plans of the company
The company is expected to raise $10 million seeing the growth rates.
We already have one 350 sq ft. store in Delhi’s domestic airport, T3 and will be looking to open another three to four destination stores of about 1,000 sq ft. each by the end of 2016- Nayar
The company’s future plans include launching its own private label along with a couple of brands under the ownership of Nykaa.
The company is also planning to look at an integrated approach to beauty by introducing vitamins and supplements in order to maintain looks.
Learnings
- The company’s approach to categorizing its customers in 3 parts helped the company to cater to the needs of the customers effectively.
- By providing content and experts online to its audience, Nykaa ensured they have provided valuable content to its customers by solving their queries which helped in building their user base.
- By introducing more products like beauty supplements and vitamins, Nykaa is opening up new avenues for growth. This integrated approach helped them to grow.
- By leveraging their online presence to make their retail store a success, Nykaa is increasing its revenues and sales.
Image Credits: wikimedia
