Falguni Nayar on D2C Economics

Falguni Nayar founded Nykaa in 2012 after a long career in investment banking, building a beauty e-commerce business that listed in 2021 as one of the rare Indian consumer-tech unicorns to both go public and remain profitable at the operating level at the time of listing.

The decision to hold inventory rather than operate a pure marketplace was the central strategic choice: it traded gross margin for control over authenticity, a trade that mattered more in beauty — where counterfeit risk is high — than in horizontal e-commerce.

The 2021 IPO's reception — priced at a premium and holding value better than the 2021-22 cohort of Indian tech listings — was read as the market's reward for a unit-economics-first model, contrasting with the growth-at-all-cost framing of peers.

The post-IPO pivot toward Nykaa Fashion and the eBZ retail-store buildout reflected a preference for owned channels over a marketplace extension, preserving margin control at the cost of slower scaling.