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Nykaa success story
Published: 08/04/2025 | By: Paritosh Pandey, SEO Analyst

Nykaa: Revolutionising the Online Beauty Industry with Persuasive Marketing

 

If you are a person who likes to groom using a range of beauty and wellness products, then you might have heard of Nykaa. Nykaa is an e-commerce platform for beauty and cosmetic products for women and men. Started in 2012, Nykaa is an online retail platform breaking the myth that e-commerce and beauty retail does not work in India.

Today, we are going to discuss the story of a fresh e-commerce platform for beauty and wellness products that has become the first choice of every cosmetic lover in India. Nykaa has curated some of the best and most persuasive strategies that led to the formation of a strong online network or community which has helped in boosting their sales.

What Nykaa is?

Nykaa is an Indian-origin multi-beauty brand and personal care products, which started off as an e-commerce portal and later opened up retail outlets in several bug metropolitan cities in the country. Nykaa prides itself on offering a comprehensive selection of cosmetics, skincare, haircare, fragrances, bath and body, luxury and wellness products for women and men. Nykaa has offers well-curated, well-priced, 100% genuine and branded products, and it receives over 1 million orders per month from all over India.

A Brief Background

It is really hard for a person to quit their well-established job at 50 and then think about strategies to start a business. Surely, it wouldn’t have been easy exemplary stories like Falguni Nayar who bid goodbye to her well-established career to give birth to her entrepreneurship dream, Nykaa.

Falguni Nayar is an IIM Ahmedabad alumnus who worked as a venture investor and merchant with Kotak Mahindra Group for over 19 years. In 2012, Falguni decided to quit her job at Kotak Mahindra Bank as the Former Managing Director and start her own business venture.

While looking for business opportunities in India, Nayar found that there existed a huge gap in the beauty products markets in India at that time. and that the country around 2012 was lagging far behind of various other countries like Japan, France and European countries in the race. At the same time, she found that demands of such services were unexpectedly high in the country with respect to offering genuine beauty products. This led her to jump and grab the opportunity of launching Nykaa in collaboration with her husband Sanjay Nayar.

The Mumbai-based start-up sells multi-brand beauty and wellness products online. As per Forbes, Today the Nykaa has more than 46 stores across the country. With an amalgamation of conceptualised business strategies, Nykaa has created a huge customer base for itself. We will now explore some of the strategies that this venture adopted.

Business Model of Nykaa

The online beauty and wellness brand follows an inventory-based business model that has helped it gain recognition in the fashion and cosmetics industry. In this business model, all the items are collected at one place in an inventory and the orders are processed according to the products available in the stock. This ensures that all the bulk orders are received at once instead of one item at a time. With an aim to provide a hassle-free shopping experience, Nykaa has adopted following strategies:

  • Omnichannel Experience: As we live in a world in which we can order groceries, shop for clothes, buy books and complete our demands at just the click of a button. A major issue that users face while buying beauty products online is that they aren’t able to “try” the products on. Users can’t gauge whether the cosmetics suit their complexion. Nykaa served this channel by providing an omnichannel experience that has helped this e-commerce platform alleviate the most pressing user pain point. Nykaa has allowed users to try on brands like HudaBeauty which doesn’t have retail outlets in India. They have also provided its customers to shop their favourite brands using a phone or laptop, or if the customer is confused they can just visit their stores and try it on for themself.
  • Building a Network Community: Nykaa has built a community wherein users can converse, share ideas and tips, get inspiration, learn and watch new tutorials. By adopting this strategy, Nyka has built the best strategy to retain the customer base and attract new ones also. Nykaa serves both rich and middle-class people. Nykaa also has its offline presence in two store formats: 
    • Nykaa Luxe: The Luxe format features luxury beauty brands such as Bobbi Brown, Smashox, HudaBeauty, etc.
    • Nykaa On-Trend: Nykaa On-Trend features curated products by category based on their popularity.
  • Expenditure: The costs include the salaries paid to employees, maintenance costs and the marketing costs.Due to its unique features and great customer service, the beauty and wellness brand has created a well-reputed image worldwide and is increasing its base day-by-day. Nykaa has been receiving 15,000 orders a day, mostly from consumers between the ages of 22 and 35. As the Mumbai-based brand has an online setup, it has adopted various best digital marketing services to gain wide popularity within a short period of time. With the help of the best digital marketing agency in India, they have transformed the shopping experience of ladies around the world.

Digital Marketing Model of Nykaa

As a part of their digital marketing strategy, they wanted to target the audience of every demographic, be it a lady or a girl who had easy access to the internet. This included students and professionals who did not have time to visit the store to buy beauty or wellness products. They adopted top-digital marketing strategies. Consult the best brand activation agencies. Let us dive into digital marketing strategies adopted by Nykaa:

  • Content Marketing: By establishing a creative team of young professionals in their content strategy, Nykaa has leveraged the power of content creatively. Nykaa creates eye-catchy and trendy content that plays well with the audience’s mind. It also gauges their attention to buy the products they are offering.Nykaa aims to attract different types of audiences by generating trendy content for various platforms like website content, web articles, blogs, video content like tutorials, web series that are streamed on the app to co-branded films. Choose from the top 10 performance marketing agencies in Gurgaon for best content marketing strategies.
  • YouTube Marketing: To engage with the audience through videos, Nykaa owns a dedicated YouTube channel “Nykaa TV” that provides the consumers with the latest and the best video guides for using beauty and wellness products, and makes people aware of latest trends in the society. With a range of “how-to videos”, they help the users and customers in choosing the right products as well as in using them in the right way. Nykaa has garnered 985K subscribers on their YouTube Channel. Hire the best digital video production company for top-quality video production services.
  • Platform Marketing: Nykaa has left no stone unturned to promote their brand, be it on Nykaa’s website, or its mobile application, as both are aesthetically designed to grab the audiences’ attention. Across all the platforms that Nykaa offers, it places a huge importance on brand positioning through the website- this means that fresh and updated content is always available for the target audience. The brand runs blogs, guides, targeted ads on its main platform to increase online sales.
  • Search Engine Optimisation: Nykaa has tapped on search engine optimization services for the sake of improving organic research and establishing their brand presence. Keeping abreast with the industry trends has also helped Nykaa stay ahead in the game. Nykaa has adopted the best search engine optimization services to optimize their content with potential keywords that show up high in search results.They have also optimised their blogs and articles to be easily crawled and searchable through Google, Nykaa also had them primed for Google Answer Box. In addition, a unique hero blog strategy has made the reader experience more convenient by creating a web of relevant/related articles through a single gateway.
  • Email Marketing: Nykaa has leveraged the power of email marketing creatively. As a part of their promotional plays, the brand sends out mailers to highly engaged shoppers, including trending mailers that offer a concise look at popular trends in the industry. These emailers give a sneak peek at the top stories. The e-mailer marketing strategy has been performing exceedingly well with the highest engagement rates and has the open rate of 25-30%. Consult the top email marketing agency in India for best email marketing strategies.
  • Influencer Marketing: Nykaa has also tapped upon influencer marketing strategies to create buzz around the launch of its upcoming products. The brand collaborated with influencers with a following of less than 5 lakh and was able to garner a reach of more than three million followers in days from which their media value reached between Rs 5-7 lakh. Nykaa believes in creating long-term partnerships with the influencers on board in order to garner consumer’s trust and increase engagement. Recently Nykaa has also declared the famous Bollywood actress Jhanvi Kapoor as the brand ambassador. Reach out to the best influencer marketing agency in India.
    Checkout the influencer’s post for the launch of Clay it Cool mask by Nykaa.

 

influencer marketing strategies

 

  • Social Media Optimisation: As an online eCommerce platform, Nykaa has established its strong social presence and has leveraged various social media platforms for its lead generation. You can also react to top 10 social media agencies in Gurgaon for best SMO services in Delhi and NCR. They have made use of following platforms:
  • Facebook: The company makes use of its Facebook fan page for sharing various offers & deal posts that has yielded them a massive 3.3 million fan following. In fact, to enhance reachability, the e-retailing brand has also integrated a “Shop Now” option on it that redirects consumers to their e-commerce website for purchasing the beauty products if they wish to.

 

ecommerce marketing strategies

 

ecommerce marketing strategies

 

Instagram: Nykaa Instagram is highly visual and creative as it showcases videos from all over the world that contain user-generated content. Be it a normal video or an IGTV, the Nykaa has managed to engage the audience with their content. The online eCommerce platform has a whooping audience of 1.5 million followers. It also advertises its various range of products, offers, deals and posts videos of many influencers.

 

instagram marketing strategies

 

instagram marketing strategies

 

Snapchat: Nykaa partnered with Snapchat for a campaign in order to increase the number of app installs and tap into a new set of audience. Tapping the right target audience, bifurcating the story ads, snap and collection ads between iOS and Android worked well and generated 9X ROI, the overall CTR saw a 30% hike because of creative and optimization settings.

Digital marketing has been working very well for Nykaa. It has helped eCommerce platforms to gain a lot of popularity within a short period of time. There are many campaigns that have helped the Nykaa establish its image and have touched the lives of the people, especially women in the country. Some of the best performance marketing agencies will help you in devising the best influencer marketing strategy for your brand.

Campaigns of Nykaa

  • #WhatMakesYouBeautiful ft Laxmi Agarwal by Nykaa
    Nykaa, as a brand, wishes to make beauty more accessible and empowering to all. With Laxmi Agarwal, they wanted to put across a message to women everywhere: You can be any kind of beautiful you want and makeup is simply a tool to celebrate and express yourself with. The campaign wanted to talk about many nuanced and intricate traits that make a woman beautiful.
  • #BreaktheHashtag Ft. Taapse Pannu
    The ad campaign makes an attempt to move away from the stereotypes and tells us of the many roles which a woman plays in her life. The attempt of the campaign is to highlight that every woman has juggled through many roles and struggled through many labels. It is time to break the stereotype and come out from it.
  • #Women’s Day Special
    Nykaa’s campaign is a reflection of today’s Indian woman and the changing landscape. It is a celebration of confident and successful strides made by women in different walks of life – from being at the centre of high-stake tables to multitasking motherhood and a high-profile career, from leading science and innovation to manoeuvring the skies, and winning on the field. It celebrates her, the one who is the Nayaka (word of Sanskrit origin meaning one in the spotlight) of her life.

Conclusion

Nykaa has proven to be one of the best start-ups. With its poised and slow and steady approach, it is about to become one of the best beauty and wellness giants in the market, in the coming years. It is the epitome of trust, wellness and care for all its customers. Contact The Marcom Avenue for the best digital marketing services.

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Author Info
Paritosh Pandey
SEO Analyst I have more than 5 years of experience in digital strategy and content creation, I lead the Search Marketing team at The Marcom Avenue. I am passionate about innovation and data-driven decisions, I’m committed to providing valuable insights and highlighting emerging trends to empower marketers. Let’s work together to unlock the full potential of search marketing!