India’s Gen Z are driving up a mega boom in its beauty market
9 hours ago
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India’s beauty brands have been drawing a lot of interest from global capital recently
Earlier this year in March, American luxury cosmetics maker Estée Lauder fully acquired the homegrown ayurvedic company Forest Essentials. France’s L’Oréal Group followed in June, picking up a majority stake in digital personal care brand Innovist. And Unilever has made at least four beauty investments in the country through its venture capital arm in the last couple of years
Founded at the turn of the millennium in a garage in the Himalayan foothills by entrepreneur Mira Kulkarni – a single mother of two – Forest Essentials has grown from a fledgling startup into a billion-dollar company with a global presence over the last two decades
Its rise mirrors the explosive growth being witnessed of the country’s beauty industry, which was valued at about $23bn (£17.08bn) in 2025 but is expected to nearly double in size to $40bn by the end of this decade, growing at twice the rate of the country’s GDP and the broader retail market
Rising spending power in Asia’s third-largest economy is partly driving this boom, according to experts
India’s per capita income crossed $2,000 in 2019, a threshold beyond which discretionary spending tends to grow exponentially a business consultancy. And by 2030, some 155 million households are expected to earn more than $9,500 annually, providing a further tailwind to growth
“Historically we’ve underspent on beauty because there was just no purchasing power for anything other than the very basic stuff – such as all-purpose soap or face powder,” Kushal Bhatnagar, a partner at Redseer, told the BBC
“But now, along with more spending power, there is improved access, distribution and product education. The internet broke these barriers, with brands leveraging the power of social media platforms and influencers to reach consumers directly.”
In fact, e-commerce is expected to drive around 35% of overall beauty spending by 2030, compared with just 8% five years ago
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The pandemic also proved to be a major game-changer for the industry whose two beauty ventures have witnessed breakneck expansion since their launches during Covid
She co-founded the vegan skincare company Hyphen with Bollywood star Kriti Sanon in 2023 and also runs mCaffeine which makes scrubs, washes and lotions and calls itself India’s first caffeinated personal care brand
“Covid pushed people inward and toward self-care, and it coincided with a massive wave of digital penetration tier-one, tier-two and tier-three towns. Suddenly Indian consumers had access to beauty and skincare education they’d never had before – such as what was trending in Korea or Europe, or what specific ingredients could do for brightening or acne control,” Gupta told the BBC
“That knowledge base created a consumer who knew exactly what they wanted. And that’s really where the boom in Indian skincare began.”
In the past year Gupta’s brands have grown their top line by 100% and she anticipates strong double-digit growth going forward
Both Hyphen and mCaffeine, she says, are now among the top 10 brands across their categories in India
“This is a structural growth story – and we’re just at the beginning of what this market can become,” Gupta said
It is no surprise then, that a host of Bollywood stars – from Deepika Padukone to Katrina Kaif and Shilpa Shetty of Big Brother fame – have also jumped on the bandwagon and launched skincare companies in recent years
The growth in customers is coming from all corners of the country and isn’t restricted to big cities
What’s also striking is that the Gen Z is driving it, spending roughly double what millennials did on skincare and personal care
Data from Wamart-backed Flipkart, India’s largest e-commerce platform corroborates this. Some 56% of its beauty and personal care shoppers are Gen Z, with 70% of them discovering the products they buy through social media
Two out of three beauty searches on Flipkart also come from non-metro areas
m-caffeine
According to Redseer, Gen Z and Gen Alpha’s share of beauty spending will grow from 32% in 2024 to around 50% by 2030
It’s an inflection point who leads brand strategy at Flipkart. What was once an “aspirational category has now become a daily expression of self-care” for many young Indians, she says
Going forward, the consumer is only likely to become more sophisticated as the market grows from here. And the next leg of growth will be driven by niche brands innovating with specific ingredients, dermatologist-backed products and a focus on skin nutrition, say experts
While only a handful of individual brands have scaled meaningfully so far, at this pace of growth at least 10-15 beauty companies will cross $200m in revenue in the next three to five years
“And when that happens, we expect many of them to tap the public markets, and for IPO (initial public offering) and M&A (mergers and acquisitions) activity to really intensify in the sector,” he said
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