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Beauty Market Faces Growing Insurgency
Financial Express Kochi
|April 23, 2025
Why Are Legacy Beauty Brands Sparring With D2C Players?
While Hindustan Unilever's Lakme and Honasa Consumer's The Derma Co have called a truce in their sunscreen battle, the episode once again underlines the fact that direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands in the online beauty and personal care (BPC) market have emerged a serious threat to legacy brands.
Over the past few years, over 35 D2C brands have thronged this category, though only a few have scaled up beyond the ₹100-crore revenue mark. Only a handful—such as Mamaearth, The Derma Co and SUGAR Cosmetics—have reached revenues of ₹500 crore.
But thanks to e-commerce and social media, smaller companies can punch far above their weight. The barriers to market entry are lower; distribution is democratised and messaging is scalable.
This story is from the April 23, 2025 edition of Financial Express Kochi.
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