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August 6, 2025
Naini Thaker, Forbes India
Aug 06, 2025
It’s a known fact that of the thousands of startups founded each year, only a small fraction survive—and even fewer scale to become unicorns. Rarer still are those unicorns which, after reaching dizzying heights, come crashing down. The Good Glamm Group is one such cautionary tale.
Once celebrated as a unicorn that cracked the code on content-to-commerce, the company’s meteoric rise was matched only by the speed of its unravelling. At the heart of its downfall lies a critical misstep: The relentless pursuit of growth through acquisitions and brand launches, even as cracks in its house-of-brands model began to show. Instead of pausing to consolidate and build sustainably, Good Glamm doubled down—prioritising valuation over viability.
That strategy came to a head on July 23 when founder and CEO Darpan Sanghvi announced the dissolution of the group’s house-of-brands structure. In a LinkedIn post, Sanghvi confirmed that lenders would now oversee the sale of individual brands, effectively ending the company’s vision of building a digital-first FMCG conglomerate.
Despite raising $30 million in 2024 and undergoing multiple rounds of restructuring, the group failed to integrate its acquisitions or generate sustainable profitability. With key investors such as Accel and Bessemer Venture Partners exiting the board and leadership turnover accelerating, the company’s ambitious empire—built on rapid expansion and aggressive brand aggregation—has now been reduced to a lender-led breakup.
In the aftermath of the announcement, Sanghvi offered a candid reflection on what went wrong. “In hindsight, it wasn’t one decision, one market force, or one acquisition. It was three levers we pulled, which together, turned Momentum into a Trap,” he wrote in a LinkedIn post. According to Sanghvi, the group’s downfall stemmed from doing “too much, too fast and too big”.
He elaborated: “At first, Momentum feels like your greatest ally. Every headline, every funding round, every big launch is a shot of adrenaline. And you start believing you can do more and more and more. But momentum has a dark side. If you stop steering and go in a hundred different directions, it doesn’t just carry you forward, it drags you faster and faster until you can’t breathe.”
Where The Model Broke?
In October 2017, Sanghvi launched direct-to-consumer (DTC) beauty brand MyGlamm. Most brands at the time were big on selling on marketplaces such as Amazon or Nykaa. However, Sanghvi believed, “We wanted to be truly DTC and not just digitally enabled. We believed that to own the customer, the transaction needs to happen on our own platform.”
But the biggest challenge with being a DTC brand is its customer acquisition cost (CAC). Towards the end of 2019, the company was spending about $15 (over ₹1,000) to acquire a customer to transact on their website. “Around the same time, our revenue run rate was ₹100 crore. We were spending about $0.5 million to acquire 30,000 customers a month. That’s when we realised it was time to solve the CAC problem,” Sanghvi told Forbes India in 2022. In an attempt to find a solution, Sanghvi turned to the content-to-commerce model.
And then, started the acquisition spree. According to Sanghvi, with a single brand in a single category one can’t build scale. He told Forbes India, “The most you can scale it is ₹1,000 crore, if you want a company that’s doing ₹8,000 or ₹10,000 crore in revenue, it has to be multiple brands across multiple categories.” In hindsight, this perspective might be debatable.
As Devangshu Dutta, founder of consultancy Third Eyesight, points out, the “house of brands” model is essentially a modern-day consumer-facing business conglomerate—and its success hinges on multiple factors working in harmony. While there are examples globally and in India of such models thriving, both privately and publicly, the reality is far more nuanced. “Brands take time to grow, and organisations take time to mature,” Dutta notes, emphasising that rapid aggregation of founder-led businesses under a single ownership umbrella is no guarantee of success.
In recent years, Dutta feels the influx of capital into early-stage startups and copycat models—often seen as lower risk due to their success in other geographies—has shortened business lifecycles and inflated expectations. The hope is that synergies across the portfolio will unlock outsized value, but that rarely plays out as planned. “It is well-documented that more than 70 percent of mergers and acquisitions fail,” he adds, citing reasons such as weak brand fundamentals, lack of synergy, inadequate capital, limited management bandwidth, and internal misalignment.
In the case of Good Glamm, these fault lines became increasingly visible as the group expanded faster than it could integrate or stabilise.
Scaling Without Steering
In FY21, the company had losses of ₹43.63 crore, which rose to ₹362.5 crore in FY22 and went up to ₹917 crore in FY23. Despite the mounting losses, Good Glamm marked its entry into the US market, in a joint venture with tennis player Serena Williams to launch a new brand—Wyn Beauty by Serena Williams. The launch was in partnership with US-based beauty retailer Ulta Beauty.
For its international expansion, it invested close to ₹250 crore over three years. “We anticipate that the international business will account for 25 to 35 percent of our total group revenues by the end of next year. This strategic focus on international expansion is pivotal as we prepare for our IPO in October 2025,” he told Forbes India in April 2024.
Clearly, things didn’t pan out as expected. As Sanghvi rightly points out, it was indeed a momentum trap. “You tell yourself you’ll fix the leaks after the next milestone. But the milestones keep coming, and so do the leaks. Soon, you’re running from fire to fire, never realising that the whole building is getting hotter. And somewhere along the way, you lose the stillness to think,” he writes on his LinkedIn post.
Dutta feels that a strong balance sheet is the most fundamental requirement, “to provide growth-funding for the acquisitions or for allowing the time needed for the acquisitions to mature into self-sustaining businesses over years. In the case of VC-funded businesses, the pressure to scale in a short time can go against what may be best for the business or for its individual brands”.
The Good Glamm Group’s fall is a reminder that scale alone doesn’t build resilience. Its story reflects the risks of expanding faster than a business can integrate, and of prioritising valuation over value. The house-of-brands model can work—but only when backed by strategic clarity, operational discipline, and patience. This is less a warning and more a reminder for founders: Scale is not success, and speed is not strategy.
(Published in Forbes India)
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August 5, 2025
Aakriti Bansal, Medianama
August 5, 2025
MediaNama’s Take: Swiggy is shifting from individual convenience to workplace capture. With DeskEats and Corporate Rewards, the company is embedding itself directly into the workday. This move is not just about food delivery. It is about becoming part of employees’ daily routines. More repetition leads to more orders, stronger retention, and access to a new layer of user behaviour: professional identity.
This approach draws from older models like office canteens and Sodexo meal cards. However, Swiggy reworks it for the app economy. Instead of fixed menus or closed ecosystems, it offers personalized choices tied to employer-subsidised benefits. That creates stickiness. When a company supports one app and offers discounts, switching becomes less likely.
The key question now is whether this integration creates lasting value or opens up new responsibilities. These include questions around consent, profiling, and where to draw the line between workplace systems and digital platforms.
What’s the News
Swiggy rolled out DeskEats, a curated food delivery collection for working professionals, in 30 cities and over 7,000 corporate hubs, according to Storyboard18. MediaNama also reviewed the feature on the Swiggy app. The collection includes categories like Stress Munchies, Healthy Nibbles, One-Handed Grabbies, and Deadline Desserts, aimed at common workday cravings.
During the pilot, DeskEats reached 14,000 companies and 1.5 lakh employees. Users can find it in the app by typing “Office” or “Work.”
Swiggy also launched Corporate Rewards, which lets users access benefits by verifying their work email. These include flat Rs 225 off food orders, Rs 2,000 off on Dineout, and Rs 100 off on Instamart.
On LinkedIn, Swiggy VP Deepak Maloo described Corporate Rewards as the professional version of its earlier Student Rewards program which offers perks like free deliveries, flat Rs 200 discounts, and deals starting at Rs 49, tailored for students aged 18–25 across India.
Financial Context
Swiggy may have launched DeskEats while under pressure to control its burn. In Q1 FY26, it spent Rs 1,036 crore on ads—a 132% jump and posted a loss of Rs 1,197 crore. DeskEats and Corporate Rewards offer a way to stabilise repeat orders without over-relying on discounts or ad spending.
The company’s adjusted Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortisation (EBITDA) loss widened to Rs 813 crore. Overall, food delivery revenue grew by 20.2% year-over-year to Rs 2,080 crore, with order volume growing by 23.3%. At the same time, newer formats like ultrafast Bolt and SNACC are aimed at increasing consumption frequency and improving retention. These efforts signal Swiggy’s larger bet on everyday integration to drive value.
Platform Strategy and Corporate Integration
DeskEats gives Swiggy access to dense, time-sensitive demand during work hours. Devangshu Dutta, founder of Third Eyesight, says this helps streamline operations: “By integrating directly with workplaces, Swiggy can anchor itself in employees’ daily routines and provide a more predictable stream of orders.”
He adds, “Scheduled office meals create habitual consumption patterns and increase customer lifetime value, especially when the employer endorses a single platform and offers a favourable price-value mix.”
“This is the age-old model followed by contracted office canteens or cafeterias as well, but updated to the mobile app era, with more flexibility in terms of the items that an individual can order based on their own preferences”, Dutta added.
Furthermore Dutta opined, “Adoption is likely to be more in the larger cities where there is a greater concentration of demand and out-of-home consumption is higher among migrant professionals with high discretionary spending power.”
Data, Consent, and Workplace Targeting
To access Corporate Rewards, users verify with their work email. Swiggy hasn’t said whether it collects additional employee data or whether employers see usage metrics. It’s also unclear if enrolment is opt-in or automatic.
This concern mirrors recent questions raised about Zepto, which began recommending mood-specific product bundles like “Crampy” or “Ragey” based on user searches for PMS. Critics pointed out that such inferences may not be accurate and are often made without the user’s explicit awareness. Zepto’s privacy policy permits broad data collection, including health and behavioural patterns, but lacks clear disclosure on profiling. While Swiggy may not be doing this visibly, the direction of workplace-linked behaviour data raises similar concerns under India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDPA), which still doesn’t regulate inferred or behavioural data clearly.
As this model scales, it raises questions under India’s DPDPA especially around purpose limitation and workplace-based profiling.
Why This Matters
Swiggy’s push into the workplace mirrors a broader shift across the food delivery market. Zomato recently launched ‘Zomato for Enterprise,’ a corporate food expense management platform that allows employees to charge business orders directly to their companies. With features like budgeting, ordering rules, and account toggling between work and personal use, Zomato is positioning itself as a paperless, digital alternative to legacy players like Sodexo. According to CEO Deepinder Goyal, over 100 companies have already onboarded the platform.
This move signals intensifying competition in the enterprise food space. While Zomato focuses on billing and reimbursements through employer-tied accounts, Swiggy is targeting recurring workplace consumption through curated menus and behavioural nudges. Both platforms appear to be building business-facing verticals that go beyond consumer ordering, aiming to lock in institutional clients and expand platform dependency within the workspace.
Unanswered Questions
MediaNama reached out to Swiggy with the following questions. The article will be updated when we receive a response:
Is Swiggy positioning DeskEats and Corporate Rewards as part of a larger shift into corporate benefits?
How do companies sign up for Corporate Rewards? Are there different plans or models based on company size?
What employee data does Swiggy collect when someone signs up using their work email?
Are DeskEats and Corporate Rewards linked to Swiggy One or any other paid subscription?
How many companies and users are currently active on DeskEats?
Does Swiggy plan to scale this into a standalone B2B vertical?(Published in Medianama)
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July 28, 2025
By Meenakshi Verma Ambwani, Hindu Businessline
New Delhi, July 28, 2025
Nykaa said that Kay Beauty, co-founded with actor Katrina Kaif, has crossed the ₹240 crore mark in terms of Gross Merchandise Value.
Stars from the tinsel town are donning the entrepreneurial hat to venture into the beauty and fashion business space. Some have even succeeded in growing their brands sustainably, earning big bucks.
Take for instance Skincare brand Hyphen, co-founded by actor Kriti Sanon with Pep Brands, which recently touched the ₹400 crore-mark in Annual Recurring Revenues.
Tarun Sharma, CEO and co-founder, Hyphen told businessline: “The brand is witnessing healthy growth rate quarter-on-quarter. In the first year itself, it touched ₹100 crore ARR. We had aimed for ₹500 crore ARR in 3-4 years and, within two years, we are at ₹400crore ARR.” Pep Brands led by Sharma owns mCaffeine and Hyphen.
The model that works
Sharma believes an operator-led, celebrity anchored model works better. ”The operator can bring in the necessary financial and execution muscle. If a celeb partners with an operator that has deep expertise in the space, then there is huge potential for growth,” he added.
“Product launches, marketing and distribution are very data-driven at Pep Brands. It guides us on what to launch, when to launch, and how to launch products. That has helped Hyphen in achieving this kind of growth rate. It is by design that the majority of the business of Hyphen is D2C,” Sharma explained.
In May, Nykaa said that Kay Beauty, co-founded with actor Katrina Kaif, has crossed the ₹240 crore mark in terms of Gross Merchandise Value. On an earnings call for Q4FY25, Adwaita Nayar, Executive Director, Chief Executive Officer, Nykaa Fashion, said: “Kay Beauty is one of the fastest-growing brands on the platform. It’s hit about ₹240 crore of GMV. The innovations have been fantastic this year. So, it is quite a premium brand, and I think the consumers are accepting it even at that price point. It’s got great gross margins.”
Earlier this year, Reliance Retail Ventures announced that it has decided to acquire 51 per cent stake in Ed-a-Mamma , a kid and maternity wear brand founded by actor Alia Bhatt. According to some reports, Hrithik Roshan’s sportswear brand HRX is a ₹1,000 crore brand.
Among the recent entrants are Ranbir Kapoor, who has decided to foray in the apparel and accessories space with ARKS. Launched in February, the brand has also launched its first store in Mumbai, followed by a second store in New Delhi and another with Broadway in Hyderabad.
‘Shift in preferences’
Abhinav Verma, co-founder and CEO, ARKS, told businessline: “We are seeing a shift in consumer preferences towards made-in-India brands. We decided to leverage on the strong manufacturing capability that India has to build a brand that is both aspirational and offers value. We are looking to build a ₹100 crore brand in the next 3-4 years with a strong omni-channel strategy.”
“The success of some of these brands demonstrates that building on consumer relevance and with powerful time-bound execution, celebrity ventures can become significant players in a crowded market. With consumer demand for relatability and digital-first branding on the rise, this segment will definitely grow. However, only brands that offer genuine value to consumers, and not just star appeal, are likely to endure,” said Devangshu Dutta, CEO, Third Eyesight.
(Published in The Hindu-Businessline)
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July 28, 2025
Ananditha Anand, Deccan Chronicle (Hyderabad Chronicle)
Hyderabad, 28 July 2025
Beauty is borrowing from the bakery. Be it glazed donut skin, popularised by Hailey Bieber, jam lips, or strawberry freckles – food related makeup looks, as well as cosmetic marketing trends have been at an all-time high. In June 2025, around 2 lakh users looked up latte makeup on the image-based social media platform, Pinterest.
The Novelty Value
According to social-media-influencer Yashvi Bhaia, these trends bring a sense of novelty to cosmetic products. “Take a look at one of the body washes called Whipped Lush. It feels exactly like whipped cream – fluffy, foamy and sweet. This visual being attached to the product brings a pleasant connection,” she says.
Devangshu Dutta, founder of Third Eyesight, a management consulting firm, says, “Terms like choco mousse blush or berry lip tint evokes indulgence, comfort, and a sense of reward, transforming cosmetics into emotional experiences rather than just functional items.” Dutta likened these products to comforting treats, exuding warmth and a nostalgia for food they have consumed before, bottled in these makeup products.
Dhanashree Kavitkar is an avid follower of makeup trends on platforms like Instagram, as well as Chinese sites like Douyin and Red Note. She observes that the melding of the sensory elements of food and makeup “satisfied” the consumer.
“It works almost the same way ASMR does. When I think of jelly lips, I think edible, with a plump and glossy texture. And it just hits the right spot in my brain,” she says.
She also believes that many of these beauty trends, under the guise of novelty, are repackaging pre-existing makeup trends to make it appealing again. “Take strawberry freckle makeup for example, it is literally just drawing freckles on your face, but they gave it a new name to intrigue people,” she says.
Bina Punjani, owner of Bina Punjani Hair Studio says, “These are all marketing buzz-words created by online makeup companies, who wish to advertise to a younger audience.” She explains that food related nomenclature has existed forever in the realm of hair care products, with wines, chocolates, and caramels dominating the hair colour market.
“Sensory feelings have been a huge part of marketing and communication, be it on television, or anywhere else,” said Bhaia. “Now that marketing is so video-forward online, brands will create visuals associated with food,” she says.
Dutta adds that rather than a new concept, the increased intensity and consistency of these beauty brands employing food-related marketing on social media platforms differentiate it from their marketing in the 1980s – when it was first popularised.
Cultural Adaptation
Talking about the virality aspect of these makeup trends, Kavitkar points out how the looks trending in India (and around the world right now), were popular in East Asian countries like China and South Korea a year ago.
“Thanks to the matcha wave now, strawberry matcha makeup is popular. More East Asian food items like mochi and tanghulu have also picked up steam in the makeup space, and have gotten popular globally. But they can feel a bit alien to Indian consumers who don’t know these trends beforehand,” she says. Bhaia talks about how Indian cosmetic products adapted these trends to cater to the Indian “taste.” A leading brand has come up with lip products named masala chai, and jalebi glaze.
“These are such Indian terms, and they’ve been marketed so well. When you think of jalebi, you think of this shiny, orange-ish kind of thing, and you have a very clear visual of it.”
Just Another Trend
What keeps the novelty of these trends alive? Punjani thinks that it is the familiarity that we as humans draw towards nature and ourselves. “Suppose you look at your skin tone, and you see that exact shade in a pear – you end up drawing a psychological connection between the two,” she says.
Kavitkar thinks that they bring in a new wave of experimentation. She says, “Look at tangerine dream makeup. It is a mix of yellow and orange blush on your face, which looks so weird. If you saw someone wearing yellow blush outside, you’d be like, what the hell is she wearing? But that’s the beauty of this look, it’s so out of the box.”
Dutta notes that the frequency of usage of any imagery in the industry ebbs and flows with fashions. “Food, however, consistently provides an intuitive, emotional, and relatable entry point for consumers to engage with beauty, and will remain a versatile tool for building stories around pleasure, nostalgia, authenticity, and self-care,” he says.
While the world goes ‘bananas’ over ‘latte makeup’ and ‘gingerbread nails’ you can try the silent power of ‘smokey eyes’ and nude lips!
(Published in Deccan Chronicle)
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July 27, 2025
Alenjith K Johny & Ajay Rag, Economic Times
Jul 27, 2025
Startups in the 60-minute fashion delivery segment are betting on features such as ‘try and buy’ and artificial intelligence (AI)-powered virtual try-ons to tackle high return rates, a key pain point in the segment. These tools are helping increase conversion rates and reduce returns while offering greater flexibility to buyers, said industry executives.
Mumbai-based Knot, which recently raised funding from venture capital firm Kae Capital, said partner brands that typically see return rates of about 20% on their direct-to-consumer websites are witnessing sub-1% returns through offline stores, a trend it is now replicating through these digital features.
“Our partner brands, which have offline stores, would typically witness 20% returns on their direct to consumer websites. But for the same purchases on offline stores, the returns are less than 1%. That is the idea. With the ‘try and buy’ feature, users can make a very decisive purchase at their doorstep,” Archit Nanda, CEO of Knot, told ET.
Return rates among users of the company’s virtual try-on feature are similarly much lower than the platform’s overall user base, he said.
Other venture-backed quick fashion delivery startups such as Bengaluru-based Slikk, Mumbai-based Zilo and Gurugram-based Zulu Club are also testing similar features to increase conversions and reduce returns.
“Returns play as big a part as maybe forward delivery does. Because these are expensive products, giving the customer his or her money back also plays a very critical role,” said Akshay Gulati, cofounder and CEO of Slikk.
Instant returns
Slikk is piloting an ‘instant returns’ feature where, like its 60-minute delivery service, returns are also completed within an hour. Once a return request is made on the app, a delivery partner picks up the product and refunds the amount instantly. The startup claims its return rate is 40-50% lower than that of traditional marketplaces and that it doesn’t charge customers any extra fees for returns.
Some users said they were satisfied with the delivery speed and trial window but pointed out that the app does not provide any return status updates until the product reaches the warehouse.
“I received my order within 60 minutes and had enough time to try it out. However, after returning the product, I didn’t receive any notification in the application until the delivery agent reached the warehouse,” said Mohammed Shibili, a working professional based in Bengaluru, who tried Slikk’s feature.
Investor interest
Investors tracking the segment estimate that try-and-buy and virtual try-on features can reduce return rates by 15-20 percentage points, translating into substantial cost savings for both platforms and brands.
“Features like try and buy are a huge cost save, not just for the platform but also for the brand. The brand otherwise would lose that inventory till it comes back and can’t make the sale on it. But now, that’s all getting quickly turned around. So, for the brand, it’s a win-win situation as well as for the customer where the money is not getting stuck till it gets the returns refunded,” said Sunitha Viswanathan, partner at Kae Capital.
Old model, new infrastructure
Flipkart-owned fashion etailer Myntra had introduced try and buy back in 2016 to attract traditional shoppers to online retail. However, the feature didn’t scale up due to supply chain limitations, according to industry executives.
“Back when Myntra launched ‘try and buy’, there was no hyperlocal delivery infrastructure. Deliveries were through national courier services. That model isn’t feasible to try and buy unless you have your own hyperlocal delivery fleet,” the founder of a fashion delivery startup said on condition of anonymity.
The founder added that while Myntra operated from large warehouses located on the outskirts of cities, the new-age supply chains are built within cities, allowing faster deliveries and enabling features like try and buy.
By the end of last year, Myntra had launched M-Now, an ultra-fast delivery service currently live in Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi, with pilots in other cities. The company said daily orders through M-Now doubled in the last quarter.
“Although it’s still early, our observations so far suggest that the quick delivery model, with its reduced wait time, attracts high-intent customers, leading to naturally lower return rates,” said a spokesperson for Myntra.
The etailer did not confirm whether the try-and-buy feature is being tested under M-Now.
Viability concerns persist
Despite the benefits, the long-term viability of these features is open to question, experts said.
“There is a cost to also providing these services (like try and buy), and whether that becomes viable at all is a question mark at this point of time. I think that’s what the concern is, and it has not been that viable,” said Devangshu Dutta, founder of Third Eyesight, a management consulting firm focused on consumer goods and retail industries.
He added that when platforms offer the try-and-buy feature, delivery executives have to wait while customers try on products, which increases the cost per delivery and reduces the number of deliveries that can be completed. Despite that, some items may still be returned, further impacting operational efficiency.
However, startups are experimenting with these features mainly on higher-margin products to offset operational costs, Dutta said, as return rates across fashion categories can range from under 10% to as high as 40% for certain items.
(Published in Economic Times)