How Nykaa started

Falguni Nayar left a long career in investment banking to start Nykaa in 2012, at a stage of life when most people are thinking about slowing down, not starting over. She was in her late forties, and she had spent years advising consumer companies without ever having built one herself.

The problem they saw

At the time, beauty shopping in India meant crowded counters, limited stock, and a real risk of picking up counterfeit products from the wrong shop. International brands were hard to find outside a handful of cities, and the women buying them had almost no place to read honest, detailed information before spending their money. Nayar had studied the beauty and personal care market closely during her banking years and believed the category deserved a proper, trustworthy retail experience online.

What they sold first

Nykaa launched as a curated online store for beauty and personal care products, sourced directly from brands and authorised distributors so customers could be sure of what they were buying. The early catalogue leaned on skincare and makeup from established international and Indian brands, presented with detailed descriptions rather than just a price and a photo. Authenticity was the pitch before anything else — in a market full of doubt, being trustworthy was itself a product feature.

The decisions that mattered

Nykaa built its own content around products early on, publishing guides and reviews rather than leaving customers to figure things out alone. This turned the site into a place people visited to learn, not just to buy, which mattered in a category where shoppers often do not know exactly what they need before they arrive.

The company also chose to go deep on one category instead of spreading thin across general e-commerce. Beauty and personal care have particular needs — batch tracking, shelf life, delicate packaging — and treating it as its own specialised business rather than a subset of a bigger marketplace let Nykaa build systems suited to it.

Physical stores came later, once the online business had found its footing, rather than the other way around. That order let the brand test what customers wanted before committing capital to real estate, and the stores that did open were designed to reinforce the same trust the website had already built.

What a small brand can take from this

A founder does not need to be young or fresh out of college to start something new. Nayar's years of watching other businesses up close gave her a clear read on what was missing in beauty retail, and that outside perspective became her edge.

Trust is worth building before scale. Nykaa's early identity was built on the promise that what you bought was genuine, and that promise did more early work than any discount could have.

Content and commerce sit well together, especially in categories where customers need guidance to choose. A small brand that explains its products clearly is doing something bigger competitors often skip.

Starting in one focused category and doing it properly beats trying to be everything at once, at least at the start. The categories can widen later, once the foundation is solid.

If you are ready to give your brand its own store instead of renting space on someone else's platform, you can start with early access.

Varchas Stores is not affiliated with Nykaa. This is an editorial story based on public reporting, written for founders who are starting out.