Varun Alagh on Conglomerate Building

Under Varun's leadership, Honasa evolved from the single flagship Mamaearth brand into a multi-brand 'House of Brands' portfolio spanning The Derma Co., Aqualogica, BBlunt, Dr Sheth's, Staze Beauty and Luminéve. Each brand was built on a distinct value proposition and assigned a clearly defined role within the broader portfolio, marking a deliberate platform-company strategy.

A broader portfolio context fed the IPO story: by listing time Mamaearth was the flagship inside a 'House of Brands' that included BBlunt, The Derma Co., Dr Sheth's, Aqualogica and Ayuga, all under parent Honasa Consumer Ltd, with the combined entity crossing ₹1,500 crore in revenue in roughly seven years — material scale, but not enough to silence the profitability-valuation debate.

Anamika also clarified that the cited revenue numbers represented six Honasa units combined, not Mamaearth alone — revenue across Honasa's units had grown 2.5x between 2020 and 2023. The point mattered because it complicated the headline valuation claim: a parent-level multiple applied to consolidated revenue was, in her reading, an overstatement of the standalone Mamaearth story being marketed to retail investors.

In this 2022 interview, Varun frames Honasa's expansion into a House of Brands around two structural shifts: a decade-long consumer transition from family-level to individualised consumption, and Honasa's own internally-built capabilities across R&D, innovation, D2C, millennial marketing and content-to-commerce. Together, he argues, these justify the platform strategy as a way to capture a larger share of the Indian consumer wallet.

Varun explicitly states Honasa's self-identity: 'At our heart, we are a brand-building company.' That framing — a portfolio of consumer brands run through shared back-end capability — is the strategic justification for acquiring Dr Sheth's and BBlunt and for spawning The Derma Co. and Aqualogica rather than continuing to scale a single Mamaearth brand.

Varun hints at strategic inorganic growth as a deliberate lever — acquisition as a faster route to brand portfolio expansion than organic launches. The Dr Sheth's and BBLUNT deals are described as the start of this M&A-led approach, suggesting the House of Brands thesis is intended to compound both through new launches and through tuck-in acquisitions.