Falguni Nayar-led Nykaa’s Rs 1-lakh-crore Moment on Listing

That’s the market capitalisation (Rs 1 lakh crore) of Nykaa upon listing. That has made 58-year-old ex-banker Falguni Nayar India’s richest self-made female billionaire, and her family trust offices now have a collective worth of about Rs 54,831 crore. There’s more. The most pleasant ‘anomaly’ is that the online beauty platform Nayar founded in 2012 is the first profitable Indian start-up unicorn to hit the public market. The Rs 5,352-crore initial public offering was subscribed 82.4 times. Incidentally, popular actress Katrina Kaif, an investor in Nykaa, was happy to have Nayar hog the limelight on L-day, no mean feat. Now with the onerous tasks of launching the company at the public market and raising funds behind her, Nayar begins the next phase of her journey—running a public company that has to lay itself bare to investor scrutiny every quarter. Given that Nykaa is profitable, she has already got a head start over other start-ups lining up for IPOs. But growth will need business expansion—entering new categories, opening more stores, building a strong (own) house of brands and expanding internationally. The grind begins here.