New-age beauty brands enjoy revenue glow-up

Bengaluru: New-age beauty and personal care brands posted strong revenue growth in fiscal 2026, with some doubling or tripling sales, aided by products tailored to niche requirements and newer marketing approaches, including influencer-led social media campaigns targeting young consumers.

Foxtale nearly doubled its operating revenue to ₹383 crore in FY26 from ₹199 crore a year earlier, according to documents filed with the Registrar of Companies.

Innovist, recently acquired by L'Oreal, almost tripled its revenue to ₹686 crore, and Nykaa-owned Dot & Key doubled its revenue to ₹799 crore, according to company filings.


Niche Segments

People familiar with Innovist's performance said its monthly revenue grew 50% from a year earlier between June and September.

Pilgrim's revenue grew 69% to Rs 690 crore in the year ended March 31, people aware of the matter said, while Deconstruct posted 32% growth to Rs 168 crore.

The strong growth for these relatively newer brands that market their products as science-backed and proven to fix specific problems comes when several early-generation D2C brands, including Sugar Cosmetics, Mamaearth, Wow Skin Science and MCaffeine, are facing challenges of scaling at a more mature stage of their businesses. Industry executives and analysts attributed this slower growth at the older brands, in part, to a lack of product innovation amid intense competition.

At Z47-backed Foxtale, which offers sunscreen, masks, face wash and moisturiser, the focus is on having limited products and variants and generating high revenue per item, founder Romita Mazumdar said. "We didn't launch too many products throughout the year. Instead, we've continued to build trust in the products that built the brand in the first place," she said.

Deconstruct targets a single category for growth, sunscreen, "instead of chasing trends and launching new products", said founder Malini Adapureddy. The market is also growing beyond the big cities. "Tier-II and tier-III shoppers are consuming the same content as tier-I users, and the infrastructure of online shopping has solved for accessibility," she said.

"New-age D2C brands are capturing demand by focusing on niche segments and solving specific consumer problems, while larger mass-market brands may not be growing as fast," said Ashish Dhir, senior director at market intelligence firm 1Lattice, explaining the divergence in the performance of the newer brands and those launched around a decade ago.

One of the relatively older brands, Sugar Cosmetics, which was founded in 2015 and sells a large portfolio of beauty and personal care products, is estimated to have posted revenue of Rs 300-350 crore in FY26, down from Rs 404 crore in FY25 and Rs 505 crore in FY24, ET reported on September 4.