Beauty and personal care brands in dull phase find quick fix to glow up

Mumbai| New Delhi: A slew of beauty and personal care brands are turning to the buzzing quick commerce channel in a bid to revive the trend of declining growth in the past year, multiple industry executives said.

The dipping revenue growth in fiscal 2024 for a range of brands such as Plum Goodness, Wow Skin Science, Purplle as well as publicly listed Mamaearth-parent Honasa Consumer has led to these companies looking beyond traditional ecommerce platforms.

They are now turning to both offline and quick commerce channels in a bid to kickstart growth. Industry experts point to the mushrooming of direct-to-consumer beauty brands and saturation on traditional ecommerce channels as triggers for slowing growth in the segment during the previous fiscal.

"Between 2015 and 2022, ecommerce sales for beauty products grew rapidly on a small base with these channels pumping in a lot of money to drive growth while profitability was not the key driver then," said Anurag Kedia, cofounder of beauty and personal care brand Pilgrim.

Saturation in Ecommerce Marketplaces
“But now we are on a very high base and all the companies are under pressure to turn profitable. In the last two years, growth on ecommerce channels has been 20-25% year-on-year, while earlier it was 50-60% growth,” he added. Pilgrim had seen a fourfold revenue growth in fiscal 2023 reaching ₹76.4 crore.

In Mumbai, Plum Goodness, which posted revenue growth of 71 % in 2023 saw topline expand by a much smaller 22 % in the next year. It clocked ₹327 crore in operating revenue for FY24. Mamaearth-parent Honasa Consumer, which went public in 2023, had a similar trend. It posted a 29% topline growth in FY24, as against 58% the year-ago. Beauty and skincare brand Wow Skin Science’s revenue fell for the second straight year in FY24.