admin
August 21, 2025
Praveen Paramasivam, Reuters
August 21, 2025
Summary
India's luxury beauty market to quintuple by 2035
Domestic brands account for less than a tenth of sales
Global brands modify offerings for IndiaIndia’s luxury beauty market is expected to quintuple to $4 billion by 2035 from $800 million in 2023, driven by its young, affluent, social-media savvy shoppers with rising disposable incomes, consulting firm Kearney and luxury beauty distributor LUXASIA said in a report.
Luxury beauty makes up just 4% of the $21-billion beauty and personal care market, compared with 8% to 24% across top Southeast Asian countries and 25% to 48% in developed markets including China and the United States.
That means there is plenty of room for growth.
“India is the last bastion of growth for premium beauty,” said Sameer Jindal, managing director for investment bank Houlihan Lokey’s corporate finance business in India.
“The Indian consumer is willing to experiment and try out new things.”
U.S. beauty giant Estee Lauder home to the brands Clinique and MAC, expects a strong runway for expansion and long-term growth in India, even as it grapples with soft sales in the Americas and Asia-Pacific.
“India today, within the Estee Lauder network, is looked at as one of the priority emerging markets,” said country general manager Rohan Vaziralli, highlighting plans to initially target 60 million women in the nation of more than 1.4 billion.
Homemaker R. Priyanka, based in the southern city of Chennai, said she was thrilled to have better access to Estee Lauder’s Jo Malone London fragrance in India, as a benefit of the companies’ efforts.
“It is easier than asking someone (abroad) to get it for you every time,” she added.
While global beauty brands might have to modify some of their products for India, which bakes in sultry temperatures in summer and oppressive humidity at other times, they face little competition from homegrown brands.
Kearney and LUXASIA identified only Forest Essentials and Kama Ayurveda as their major rivals, underscoring how domestic brands make up less than a tenth of luxury beauty sales.
In the more established markets of China, Japan and South Korea by comparison, domestic brands account for a 40% share.
“There is, of course, a premium perception gap between globally established brands and Indian brands,” said Devangshu Dutta, founder of retail consultancy Third Eyesight.
Global beauty giants’ huge marketing budgets also give them an edge over domestic brands, other industry watchers said.
WOOING INDIAN SHOPPERS
Estee Lauder is studying online sales patterns to identify the smaller cities to target, such as Siliguri in West Bengal state, partnering with designers such as Sabyasachi Mukherjee, and launching products such as kohl, an eyeliner Indians favour.
It has also invested in Forest Essentials, a brand with herbal ingredients, and in a programme offering funding to domestic beauty start-ups.
This year France’s L’Oreal said it was investing more in India and tapping into the “elevated beauty desires” of the nation’s young, digitally savvy, empowered women shoppers to drive growth. It declined further comment.
South Korea’s Amorepacific, known for brands such as Innisfree and Etude, is trying to leverage the Korean beauty craze in India with products geared to the market.
These include items for the popular “cleanser, serum, moisturiser, and sunscreen” beauty regimen, the country head, Paul Lee, said.
Japan’s Shiseido, with a history of more than 150 years, brought its NARS brand to Indian beauty retailer Nykaa’s website this year, and plans to step up growth of its brands in the subcontinent.
Global brands are very excited about India, where consumers are splurging more to stay on top of trends such as “cherry makeup”, Nykaa co-founder Adwaita Nayar said, referring to a look featuring flushed cheeks, glossy lips, and soft pink eyes.
Amazon, which has also been seeing a big boom in beauty demand in India, aims to identify emerging global trends and bring in more brands, said Siddharth Bhagat, director of beauty and fashion at the e-commerce company in India.
Retailer Shoppers Stop, which also pioneers foreign labels, plans to open 15 to 20 beauty stores in each of the next three years to boost its revenue from the segment to a quarter from less than a fifth now, its beauty business CEO Biju Kassim said.
Reporting by Praveen Paramasivam in Chennai; Editing by Dhanya Skariachan and Clarence Fernandez
(Published on Reuters)
Devangshu Dutta
October 26, 2018
[Accompanying Image credit: Amazon Go; CC/Wikimedia Commons/Brianc333a)]
To many, retail seems to be having an identity crisis.
Closed storefronts on American and European streets and dead malls in India and China are blamed on the growth of online retail. At the same time, the world’s largest online retailer, Amazon, is opening physical stores and buying offline retail operations in the US and in India, while the world’s largest retailer, Walmart, is busy digesting India’s ecommerce market leader. Even India’s online fashion and lifestyle websites – among them Myntra, Firstcry, Yepme and Faballey – are acquiring offline brands or opening stores. Or both.
What in the world is going on?
The short answer: consumers want choice; and retailers have no choice.
For many, ecommerce still seems to have the “new car smell” after more than 20 years, the message pitched so desperately by the founders of and investors in ecommerce companies still echoing: that this “new kid” will make customers’ lives a quintillion times better and wipe out the competition. Two decades on, and hundreds of billions of dollars of investment later, online retail is estimated to be about 12% of the global market. Ecommerce is 10% of the US market, of which Amazon takes up about half. In India the figure is in the vicinity of 2%, with that share is virtually stitched up between Walmart-owned Flipkart Group and Amazon.
Clearly, consumers value offline retail stores, whether for convenience or as holistic brand ambassadors. You can’t take away the fact that retail for us is theatre, experience, social.
Over at physical retail businesses, managers have been terrified of “channel conflict”. Senior management have squeezed resources for online, even when return-on-capital was demonstrably better than a new store. Some have refused to publicise their own company’s website through in-store banners, fearing that the customers would get sucked away from the store. It has been strange to see this opportunity being passed up – if a customer is trusts you to walk into your physical store, why would you not want to connect with them at other points of time when they are not near your store?
As I’ve written earlier, retail is not and should not be divided between “old-world physical” and “upstart online”. Successful retailers and brands have always been able to integrate multiple channels and environments to reach their customers.
For instance, British fashion retailer Next has long used a combination of physical stores (of varying sizes) as well as mail order catalogue side-by-side, and then ecommerce as the digital medium grew. Another British retailer, Argos, took another angle and embedded a catalogue inside the physical store – first a paper catalogue, and then on-screen.
American designer Rebecca Minkoff has taken this unification further. Without the weight of legacy systems, the brand attempts to create a seamless experience for the customer, unifying the store, in-store digital interfaces such as smart dressing rooms, the website and the mobile.
No doubt, for older companies, integrating is tough; business systems and people are in disconnected silos, incentivised narrowly. Each channel needs different mindsets, capabilities, processes and systems, to ensure that the optimal customer experience appropriate for the interface, whether it is a store, mobile app, website or catalogue. But etailers opening physical stores have their own challenges, too, tackling the messy slowness of the physical world, where you can’t instantly switch the store layout after an A:B test. They now need to develop those very “old-world skills” and overheads that they thought they would never need.
Regardless of where they begin, retailers need to mould and blend their business models with proficiency across channels. In the evolving environment, any brand or retailer must aim to offer as seamless an experience to the customer as feasible, where the customer never feels disconnected from the brand.
Varying circumstances make customers choose different buying environments. At different times or on different days of the week, even the same person may choose to shop in entirely different ways. Successful retailers that outlast their competitors have used a variety of formats and channels to meet their customers, and will continue to do so.
To my mind, retailers have no choice but to see the retail business as one, even as it is fluid and evolving. A retailer’s only choice is to bend with the customer’s choice.
(Published in the Financial Express under the title “Uniting retail: Why online versus offline debate must end“)
Devangshu Dutta
October 23, 2009
Trade, of course, has been global for millennia, so it seemed hardly unusual for retailers in the US, and in Europe to begin sourcing from distant countries in Asia where certain items were more readily available or significantly cheaper. Imports have also been encouraged as a political and developmental vehicle to aid friendly countries.
So, on the sourcing-end, large retailers have been comfortably operating beyond international borders for several decades even while the stores-end of their business was entirely domestic.
For most large modern retailers however, after the post-Second World War economic boom their core markets have grown relatively slowly (and rather predictably). While the sheer size of the US market kept American retailers busy domestically, planning and legal restrictions in terms of store size, locations, market share etc. limited manoeuvrability for retailers in Europe.
Among the current major retailers, the early retail explorer, Carrefour set out into neighbouring Spain in 1973 and then into distant Brazil in 1975. Soon after, Dutch retailer Ahold landed in the USA in 1977.
However, it took the opening up of East European economies in the 1990s to really prime the pump for growth of international retail. Suddenly, many more millions of consumers became available to European retailers close to their existing markets – both geographically and culturally – and western European retailers jumped at the opportunity.
At the same time, China seemed to have become steadily more open over the previous decade and in the early-1990s India looked accessible again. Some of the Latin American markets were also steaming up.
And, obviously, the prospect of 3-4 billion new consumers in emerging or developing markets was clearly not going to be ignored. In 2001, post dot-com, another inspiring idea hit the business world that was desperately looking for hope – the golden BRICs – the four countries focussed upon by Goldman Sachs as the biggest economies of the future: Brazil, Russia, India and China.
As incomes grew in these “developing” or “emerging markets”, the hypothesis was that consumer would want products and services similar to those in the more developed markets, creating the opportunity for retailers to cross borders. In the last 15 years or so, retail internationalization (and gradually “globalization”) has become an increasingly acceptable theme – in conceptual thinking, in retail boardrooms, in white papers, and finally in trade and mainstream media. The world has witnessed a network of retail subsidiaries, joint-ventures, franchise and other relationships spreading across continents.
Certainly, through the 1990s and 2000s, growing tele-connectivity, fashion, portable TV programming concepts, movies and print media seemed to give the impression that consumers around the world are becoming more similar, and can be reached by common formats and brands. Led by the FMCG companies on the one hand and fashion brands on the other, insights, concepts, products, formats, advertising campaigns are routinely extended across countries. (Unilever’s TV commercial for Close-Up in West Asia is a great example of this – an Anglo-Dutch company’s international brand of toothpaste, Indian models in Thailand, an Arabic voiceover and a Hindi song (“Paas Aao” – “Come Closer”) by Sona Mohapatra – surely you don’t get more global than that?)
But wait! Is the picture really as clear as that?
In 2006 Wal-Mart pulled the plug on its €2 billion German business that was a combination of German chains that it had acquired. In Russia it still has only a development presence since 2005, though it is reported to be looking at opening 10-15 stores in the following three years. According to Newsweek, Wal-Mart’s 13 year old Chinese business – even after an acquisition that is still to be approved – will have fewer stores than it would have opened in the US just in 2009. In the past it has struggled in Japan and Brazil.
In June 2009, Carrefour opened its first 86,000 sq. ft. hypermarket in Moscow, and a second one soon after that. In September, the company affirmed that the BRIC markets were its highest priority for international growth. However, in October it announced that it was pulling out of Russia. Within 4 months of the first store, Russia has gone from a market with “outstanding long term potential” to being a market to exit. In previous years the company has moved out of Japan, South Korea and Mexico. The Economist reports that significant Carrefour’s shareholders are forcing it to look at selling its Chinese business as well – obviously a move that would be politically very sensitive in China. The same shareholders are also reported to be urging a sale of its Latin American business. For now, the official statement from the company maintains an ongoing interest in all these markets.
Ikea has decided to freeze further investments in Russia, and has decided not to enter India until the Indian government allows 100 per cent foreign ownership of retail operations. It entered China in 1998, and has only 7 stores so far.
Even as Carrefour and Ikea announce plans to pull out of Russia, Russian retailers have pulled out from Ukraine, while Metro is cautious in its outlook about that country. French retailer Auchan has opened three stores in Ukraine since 2007, while the German retailer Rewe has opened all of nine since 2000.
Could the juggernaut of global retail be slowing, stopping or even – shock! – reversing? Are the BRICs and emerging markets falling out of favour?
Before we jump to conclusions, as they say in the television world: please don’t adjust your sets. As the French author Karr wrote: “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” (the more things change, the more they are the same).
It is a fact that, no matter how international or global a company becomes, when it gets to the business of retail, it needs to be intensely local. While elements of the business – concepts, products, people, money – can travel across borders, it is extremely difficult to take across an intact retail mix and expect to address a significant portion of the population in the new country. And given how important scale is to mass retailers, lack of localization would be a significant hurdle.
A company sourcing products from a developing country can fully expect his suppliers to adapt to his practices and customs. On the other hand, the same company entering that country as a retailer needs to do exactly that – adapt to the customers – rather than expecting them to fall in line because the “best practice” manual dictates certain processes or because central merchandising found some deals that were great for the home market which are totally irrelevant in the new market.
However, there are encouraging signs that retailers looking to grow internationally understand this more and more. Tesco, for one, has been following a localized approach in Thailand and South Korea, while Carrefour, Ikea, Wal-Mart have all steadily modified their approach in China and other markets. Wal-Mart’s cautious steps in India, including the stores opened by its joint-venture partner Bharti, are a complete contrast to the aggressive “plans” that were being reported in the press 2006-onwards. Recently Wal-Mart’s international chief C. Douglas McMillon was quoted by BusinessWeek as saying “we know you can’t run the world from one place”.
For the larger international retailers this means that, the benefits from international scale would be limited by the amount of localization that they carry out in their operations. For smaller and local competitors that are based in an emerging market this means a fighting chance to remain in business and even remain market leaders.
Lastly, as far as all the dark clouds gathered over international retailing and all the retreats being announced – stay tuned – this weather will change, too.
Devangshu Dutta
April 15, 2009
The organic movement has touched a variety of products, including clothing, cosmetics and home products. Possibly the most emotive area is organic food, because food products are directly taken into the body while other products have a limited and external contact.
In a sense, before the appearance of industrial agriculture and the application of synthetic nutrients and pesticides, all farming was organic. In fact, the traditional Sanjeevan system of India dates back several millennia.
Even the existing organic farming movement has been around since its founding in Europe in the early-1900s. This was initially treated as fad and its proponents were seen as eccentric (at best) or insane. However, as damage to the environment and to human health became a bigger concern, organic farming emerged as the healthier option.
Organic farming is based on the following fundamental premises:
The aim is to drive a more healthy approach all around – for the environment, for people, as well as for the animals and plants.
The organic trade (all products) is currently estimated at over US$ 40 billion globally, with an annual growth of approximately US$ 5 billion. Organic production is driven today more by demand than by supply – in many cases supply constraints of certified organic produce is more of a concern than the market demand.
Every year, increasing numbers of consumers consciously buy organic products regularly or occasionally on the basis that it is good for them and good for the planet. Certainly, true organic farms do not use synthetic materials, avoiding damage to the environment and can help to retain the biodiversity. Whether measured by unit area or unit of yield, organic farms are more sustainable over time as they use less energy and produce less waste.
It is not as if, after decades of individual enthusiasts pushing their ideas from the fringes, consumers have suddenly become more environmentally conscious. This mainstream awareness has possibly been pushed up in recent years by the involvement of large companies which have spotted the tremendous growth of a profitable niche. “Organic” is the new speciality or niche product line that can be priced at a premium due to the greater desirability amongst the target consumer group, with potentially higher profits than inorganic products or uncertified products. Today, at least in the two largest markets (the USA and Europe), large companies have the lion’s share. For instance, statistics from Germany show that in 2007 conventional retail chains sold over 53% of organic produce, while specialist organic food retailers and producers lost share during the year. Similarly in the US, after the development of the USDA National Organic Standard in 1997, significant merger and acquisition activity has been visible.
However, as the interest in organic products has grown, so have the noise levels in the market. With that the potential for confusion in customers’ minds has also grown.
In day-to-day conversations, we tend to treat organic as superior to inorganic. But the reality is a little bit more complex.
For instance, we expect organic products to contain more nutrition and be better for our bodies. While this may be true of organic animal products compared to their inorganic counterparts, it has not been demonstrated for plant products, other than anecdotal experience of taste and appearance.
There are studies that suggest that inorganic farming can produce more crop per acre and more meat per animal, and is, therefore, the better option for a planet bursting with overpopulation. (Some proponents extend that argument to genetically modified foods as well, but let’s stay away from that for the moment.)
However, there are also other studies that counter this argument by suggesting that the organic farms can end up being more efficient and productive in direct costs, yield and long-term sustainability.
Then, the big question is: if organic foods are no better nutritionally than inorganic and could be as productive for the farmer, are organic brands just skimming the gullible customer while the going is good?
We might expect certification and regulation to clear the air, but in many instances these leave out as many things as they include. Labelling is yet another concern. Countries where labelling is more stringently monitored allow logos such as “100% organic”, “organic” (more than 95% organic ingredients) and “made with organic ingredients” (over 70% organic ingredients). In other countries logos and where labelling may be less strictly monitored, the use of the term organic is far looser and even more confusing. What’s more, the usage of terms such as “Bio” or “Eco” can also mislead consumers into believing that there is something distinctly superior about the product they are about to buy when, in reality, it is often only a marketing gimmick.
Further, just because something is certified as organic does not mean it is a higher grade of product. Organic produce may end up having a shorter shelf-life, or may also be otherwise inferior to inorganic produce in the store. In fact, as the KRAV (Sweden) website states: “The KRAV logo is a clear signal that the product is organically produced but does not say anything about the quality. That must be guaranteed by the producer, i.e. yourself”. This is similar to saying that the fact that someone has a management certification from a certain institute means that he or she passed the tests of that institute in a particular year, but that does not automatically make him or her a good businessperson.
Countries and regions that have a poor record of environmental consciousness, poor transparency norms, are also not seen as the best source for organic produce even if it is apparently from a certified producer. In some cases, certification may be carried out second-hand and unverified, leading to instances such as the one in 2008 where the US retailer Whole Foods pulled out pesticides-laden “organic-certified” ginger that was shipped from China. The mixing of inorganic ingredients of uncertain origin, especially in blended products such as juices or snacks, can also make a mockery of the organic labelling.
Another visible concern today is the carbon footprint, and some people raise the question whether buying local (whether inorganic or organic) may be less environmentally damaging than importing produce from distant countries. In such instances, the evidence of lax certification, such as the Chinese case mentioned earlier, takes support away from the cause of organic imports.
Arguments have also been raised about whether the larger “organic” factory farms merely follow the letter of the law rather than the principles behind the organic movement? Small organic farmers allege that large organic-certified factory farms – especially those selling animal products – do not really follow the core principles of “natural” growth, and confine their animals in unnatural surroundings.
With all these arguments and counter-arguments flying about, some organic (or nearly organic) producers elect not to be certified, letting their customers vote with their wallets. Some of these smaller farmers may be driven by economic necessity since certification could be costly and cumbersome, while others may just find it more feasible to stick with a local sales strategy where the customers are able to physically see the organic nature of the farm.
It’s clear that all of these questions will take years to sort out – through debate, research, legislation, as well as social and commercial pressure. Meanwhile, most conscientious retailers and concerned consumers will need to do their own studies to educate themselves, and will need to examine each product for genuineness of the organic promise.
And, if you are not quite that savvy, the final message would be: “caveat emptor” (“let the buyer beware”).
Devangshu Dutta
April 11, 2009
RetailWire’s Al McLain has asked, “What changes in consumer spending habits do you see as providing retailers and manufacturers with the most opportunity? Which habits do you think will stick around once the economy improves, and which won’t?”
Well, “the only thing certain (and permanent) in life is death…”
Economic changes – including recessions – are not permanent (unless the society itself collapses), so the market mood will shift towards spending again.
Consumer sentiment may not lead the recovery but is likely to follow it. Given that, value-consciousness will stick, even after the market turns upwards. So my reading is that private label will continue to grow, people will continue to think harder about spending on big-ticket items, deals & coupons will continue to work.
Carol Spieckerman, a RetailWire panelist, made a comment about consumer spending not returning to where it was. To that I would add this thought and question: even in these recessionary days, the average American and European household consumes more (and is more wasteful) than even the wealthier households in the so-called developing or less developed economies. What if the average American consumer begins to find out that s/he can cut back even more than s/he already has? What would that do to the traditional business and economic model?
And once that consumer role model is demolished, what would that mean for the world at large and the developing economies that have been following the “consumption-led growth model”?
Obviously, this is not a foregone conclusion, but it’s a scenario worth pondering and preparing for. And some might say, perhaps a scenario even worth encouraging.
(Here are more thoughts and commentary from the RetailWire Braintrust and others readers on Lessons from the IRI Retail-CPG Summit.)