India’s appetite for global brands has never been stronger: Adwaita Nayar

Swedish fashion brand H&M has teamed up with Nykaa to retail its beauty and fashion range in an attempt to reach the Indian fashion platform’s 45-million-strong customer base.

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In a conversation with Sugandha Mukherjee, Helena Kuylenstierna, director, H&M India, and Adwaita Nayar, co-founder & executive director, Nykaa, explain why the partnership makes sense and what it means for Indian consumers. Excerpts:

H&M and Nykaa have both partnered with other brands over the years. For Nykaa it’s the first major apparel brand with a global connect. What do you gain from each other?

Kuylenstierna: This is the kind of gift we wanted to give to our fantastic audience, to launch H&M Beauty in India. And if you want to be in the beauty field, who do you call? You call Nykaa. I’ve always had the utmost respect for what they’ve built. India is such an incredibly interesting market right now. We share the belief that fashion and beauty are complementary, not competitive. We're also united by a bigger purpose of empowering young women in India to express themselves through style. Both our companies were founded by families that are still deeply involved, and that brings a shared set of values and a long-term view of serving the customer.

Nayar: We are absolutely thrilled to partner with H&M. Our motivation has always been to bring the world’s best brands to Indian consumers, who have a big appetite, and who better than H&M? It’s a brand our customers have been asking for a long time, so we're really excited to finally bring it to our 45-million customer base.

Our fashion business is younger, just about five years old, but we’ve already onboarded several international brands, of which H&M is a crown jewel for us. International brands remain a big priority because we’re seeing that this segment of merchandise is growing at more than double the rate of our overall platform.