Falguni Nayar has overnight become India’s richest self-made female billionaire entrepreneur.
Nayar’s beauty start-up Nykaa was a runaway success when it hit the stock exchange today, surging as much as 89%, and turning the owner richer by $6.5 billion.
FSN E-Commerce Ventures is parent entity of Nykaa. It’s India’s first woman-led unicorn to hit stock exchange. In all it raised $722 million or Rs 53.5 billion.
Nayar initially led a top Indian investment bank. She founded Nykaa in 2012 just months before turning 50. The start-up is now country’s leading beauty retailer, with glamorous celebrities and Bollywood stars doing demo videos. It has more than 70 brick-and-mortar stores.
Nykaa, derived from the Sanskrit word for heroine, sells items including exfoliation creams, bridal make-up essentials and hundreds of shades of lipstick, foundation and nail colour to suit Indian skin tones, skin types and local weather. Its sales surged 35% to $330 million in the year ended in March, according to its filing.
Nayar owns her company stake through two family trusts and seven other promoter entities. Her Ivy League-educated daughter and son, who run different Nykaa units, are among the promoters.
While Nayar is India’s richest self-made female billionaire, Savitri Jindal, who controls the OP Jindal Group conglomerate founded by her late husband, is the nation’s wealthiest woman. Her fortune is valued at $12.9 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a ranking of the world’s 500 richest people.
“We have a long way to go,” Nayar told Bloomberg ahead of the IPO. Women-and even men—in the country of 1.3 billion people have begun to splurge on make-up and grooming products.
