MUMBAI: Walmart’s Myntra is betting on beauty, a segment where deep-pocketed rivals like Reliance and Tata Group have been aggressively expanding. The competition in the space is palpable – last week, both Reliance’s Tira and Myntra added Dubai-based brand Huda Beauty to their array of offerings.
Myntra CEO Nandita Sinha expects the beauty and personal care industry to touch $30 billion by 2027.”10 years back, India was largely a kajal and lipstick market. Today, the number of beauty products that people are using have increased from two to five. That’s really the opportunity that the market provides us,” Sinha told TOI in an interview. The company is not holding back on investments in the beauty space and with its deep pockets, funding growth is not much of a concern either. “We are at that scale where we do not look at the customer acquisition cost,” Sinha said.

For Myntra, which has been largely known to customers as a fashion platform, expanding into the beauty space made sense given that both are somewhat related categories – getting existing users to explore its beauty offerings wouldn’t have been a very difficult task. Sinha claimed that the firm added 75 million new customers last year and its monthly average user base stands over 55 million currently.
Both the beauty and fashion segments are part of the same app, and Myntra has tapped into technology to provide beauty recommendations or what is called a nudge in digital terms to consumers making fashion purchases. “Our customers are looking for a complete solution from us. They are buying apparel, accessories, footwear on our platform and beauty is a natural, logical extension of that conversation,” Sinha said.