Nykaa CEO Anchit Nayar says consumers not cutting back on small luxuries despite inflation

• Nykaa says they are a premium retailer whose customers are much more evolved and choose lifestyle over other luxurious expenses.
• The beauty e-commerce platform’s huge portion of sales comes from smaller towns in tier II and tier III cities.
• Anchit Nayar, CEO of Nykaa, said that popular products sold on Nykaa are of active skincare brands like that of Derma Cosmetics, which says a lot about changing consumer priority towards beauty and wellness.

Inflation may be hurting household budgets, but consumers are not yet cutting back on discretionary items like skincare and cosmetics. Premium personal care retailer Nykaa is yet unaffected a slowdown in consumption.

Nykaa says its customers are much more evolved and choose lifestyle over other expenses.

“Nykaa is a slightly more premium realtor for beauty. We do sell a lot of mass brands but our consumers are slightly more evolved so it doesn’t seem to be impacting beauty consumption as of yet. Secondly, beauty as a category is a small luxury. If you are sacrificing some of your large luxuries like maybe you’re putting off buying a car, handbag but beauty is part of your everyday routine it’s essential to your lifestyle. So we are not seeing a dip in demand as yet,” said Anchit Nayar, CEO of Nykaa in conversation with Business Insider.

The e-commerce company for beauty, wellness and fashion products has partnered with over 3000 brands and 22 global brands who sell their products on Nykaa’s platform.

Six out of 10 products of Nykaa are sold in smaller towns
In the same universe where consumer products companies have been struggling to find demand for certain non-essential items due to high inflation, Nykaa’s huge portion of sales comes from smaller towns in tier II and tier III cities.

Nayar says customer behavior in smaller towns is becoming very similar to those in big cities, all thanks to access to social media.

“In Nykaa almost 60% of our gross sales comes from smaller towns -- tier II, tier III and beyond. And what is very interesting to us is that consumers in small towns are exhibiting behavior that is very similar to those in small towns,” said Nayar.

“This tells us that now there is universal access to information, a lot of that through social media but platforms like Nykaa where a consumer sitting in a small town in Assam can get access to the same information in a large city like Mumbai. As a result, they have the same aspiration so we are seeing very similar consumption trends across the country,” he added..

Nayar said that popular products sold on Nykaa are of active skincare brands like that of Derma Cosmetics, which says a lot about changing consumer priority towards beauty and wellness.

“If I were to just say one or two big trends, one is definitely active ingredients skincare like Derma Cosmetics. I would not name brands but brands that are servicing more pharmacies like skincare brands,” said Nayar.

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