Falguni Nayar - The visionary who made Nykaa

The brains behind the beauty and lifestyle retail empire Nykaa -Falguni Nayar.

“Today, heading a team of over 1600 Nykaa-ites, Falguni has built a beauty and lifestyle retail empire with a portfolio of 1500+ brands, including its private label, available online and across 68 stores in India,” reads the LinkedIn Profile of the Founder of India’s first woman-led unicorn, Nykaa.

A top banker at the Kotak Mahindra Capital Company for nine years, called it quits in her career’s prime to pursue her entrepreneurial venture in the untapped online cosmetics range segment in 2012. With her keen business acumen inherited from her father(Ball bearing Businessman), in a short span of 18 months, the visionary could make Nykaa, India’s premier online portal for beauty and wellness.

A dream venture started with seed capital from family and friends of Rs 20 crore is now eyeing a valuation of Rs 53200 crore or USD 7 billion. Together with her family, she holds a majority stake in the group companies. Falguni Nayar holds 22.32% or 104,305,770 equity shares of pre-offer paid-up capital of FSN E-Commerce Ventures Ltd through her trust Falguni Nayar Family Trust which she will continue to hold after the IPO.

She is a graduate of Sydenham College of Economics and Commerce and alumni of IIM Ahmedabad started as a consultant in a management consulting firm AF Ferguson & Co. She later joined the M&A team of Kotak Mahindra Capital Company and escalated to become the company’s Managing Director before she launched her beauty retailer, Nykaa.

Currently, she serves on board of several blue-chip companies including Tata Motors Limited, ACC Limited and Dabur India Limited. She also served as India Advisor at Temasek, a subsidiary of Temasek Holding Singapore. She was a Founding Member of the Asia Society in India and a Board Member with Business Standard.

She is a true woman achiever who has many laurels in her hat. She is one of the four Indian businesswomen on the Forbes Asia Power businesswoman list 2019. Also named Businessperson of the Year 2019 by Vogue India, Businesswoman of the Year at the Economic Times Awards for Corporate Excellence 2019. Most recently, she was awarded the EY Entrepreneur of The Year 2019 – Start-up Award by Ernst and Young.