Myntra hosts Rising Stars D2C Summit to boost India’s beauty brand ecosystem

In its commitment to provide impetus to made-in-India homegrown beauty and personal care brands Myntra recently hosted the first edition of one-of-its-kind ‘Myntra Rising Stars (MRS) Beauty Summit’.

The last few years have witnessed the transformative journey of the beauty industry in the country with the emergence of hundreds of homegrown brands catering to the evolving beauty needs of customers through differentiated offerings.

Bringing this thriving ecosystem together, the MRS Beauty Summit celebrated the entrepreneurial spirit of the brands with some notable names including Innovist, Honasa Consumer Limited, Mcaffeine, Hyphen, Minimalist, SUGAR, Bombay Shaving Company, Foxtale, Pilgrim, Deconstruct, and FAE Beauty among many others.

“As Myntra steps into its 18th year, we stand committed to building fashion and beauty for the country. Our journey is powered by the love of 70 million monthly active customers and the trust of over 9700 brands. Today, we stand at the cusp of a transformative era, as the beauty landscape in India is set to witness its next phase of growth and the homegrown D2C beauty and personal care brands will play a pivotal role in taking the industry forward,” said Sharon Pais, Chief Business Officer, Myntra.

“Through Myntra Rising Stars, we aim to provide a platform for their unique propositions to reach millions of customers across the country in the most seamless manner,” Pais added.

The Myntra Rising Stars Beauty Summit 2024 also provided a platform for insightful discussions and fireside chats, including a knowledge session by Shyam Unnikrishnan, Partner, Bain & Co., who presented a detailed analysis of the evolution of India’s beauty landscape.

He highlighted that the $21-23 billion Indian beauty and personal care market is rapidly transforming, and premiumising, with online sales set to triple to $10 billion in the next five years, creating massive opportunities for insurgent and D2C brands to lead innovation and capture evolving consumer demand.

Nandita Sinha, CEO of Myntra engaged Ghazal Alagh, Co-Founder of Honasa Consumer Limited in a fireside conversation and highlighted the rise in the adoption of I-Beauty in the country and also how Indian entrepreneurs are making strides in creating world-class products, leveraging the country’s rich legacy of ingredient-based solutions, for the diverse consumers of the country and possibly for the world.

Key highlights of the summit included the three-panel discussions bringing insights from the various facets of the industry.

Panel titled India’s Beauty Industry: Cracking the Code, featured Sujata Assomul, Journalist & Author, Karishma Kewalramni, Founder FAE Beauty, Rohit Chawla, Founder, Innovist, Bare Anatomy, Chemist at Play, SunScoop, Vaishali Gupta, Co-founder, and Chief Growth Officer at Mcaffeine and Hyphen and Romita Mazumdar, Founder, and CEO of Foxtale.

The panel delved into solutions for overcoming challenges in the internet beauty space, exploring topics such as leveraging AI for customer personalisation, tapping into tier-II and tier-III markets, and aligning products with the growing demand for conscious beauty.

The discussion also shed light upon strategies for retaining customers and building inclusive, sustainable brands in the competitive D2C landscape.

Followed by this was another engaging panel discussion on Decoding The Behaviour of Gen Z Consumers, featuring Meghna Apparao, Director of E-commerce at Meta, Kannagi Anaggh Desai, Beauty Editor, Elle India, actress Ahsaas Channa and Sunder Balasubramanian, CMO at Myntra, explored how GenZ has emerged as the next big cohort for brands and what builds resonance with them.

The summit concluded with its third investor-focused discussion on Inside the Investors’ Mind, featuring leaders Dipanjan Basu, Co-Founder & Partner at Fireside Ventures, Hariharan Premkumar, Managing Director & Head of India at DSG Consumer Partners, and Kaushik Mukherjee, Co-Founder, SUGAR Cosmetics, shared their insights into what drives investment decisions in the D2C beauty space.

Myntra’s Rising Stars programme, launched first for fashion last year, expanded to include beauty brands a few months back with the mission to accelerate their growth and help them in brand building.

Several brands that are part of the Rising Stars programme are already witnessing noteworthy growth, with some clocking impressive growth rates. With a strong set of 300 brands already on the Myntra Rising Stars Beauty Edit, about 200 new brands are expected to join the programme in the next couple of months.

(With inputs from IANS)