Long before the introduction of online business and direct-to-consumer (D2C) marketing, the Indian beauty industry was dominated by beauty care product majors. It's hard to ignore the impact of direct-to-consumer firms in the cosmetics industry, such as Nykaa, Mamaearth, WOW Skin, Plum, and Sugar Cosmetics, which have become clients' go-to solutions in metropolitan areas and tier 1 and 2 metropolitan areas.

Sugar Cosmetics is launching only two products in 2015: a dark matte eyeliner and a dark kohl pencil. Since then, the group has expanded to 450 stock-keeping units. In any case, let's take a look at how Sugar has managed to become the most prominent beauty chain in India within five years.

About Sugar Cosmetics

Sugar Cosmetics is one of the fastest growing premium cosmetic enterprises in India, and today Sugar is a favorite brand for people in the age group of twenty to thirty years. From state-of-the-art offices in Germany, Italy, India, the United States and Korea, the brand's products in the Lips, Eyes, Face, Nails and Skin classes are shipped worldwide.

With an elegant free collection in design and high performance, the brand offers products that suit every Indian colour for every season. Backed by Marquee Financial, Sugar Cosmetics is aggressively expanding with over 10,000 retail locations across 130 + urban communities by 2021 with a reason to reach every beauty care product consumer in the country.

The founders and the team

Sugar Cosmetics was founded by Kaushik Mukherjee and Vineeta Singh in 2015.

Kaushik Mukherjee
Koushik Mukherjee, co-founder and COO of Sugar Cosmetics, is a former BITS Pilani and IIM Ahmedabad alumnus and a TEDx speaker. He is also a marathon runner and an Ironman triathlete.

Vineet Singh
Vineeta Singh is the co-founder and CEO of SUGAR Cosmetics, India's fastest growing cosmetics company. She is a TEDx speaker and a graduate of IIT Madras and IIM Ahmedabad. She is a marathon runner and an ultramarathoner. Vinita is best known for her role in the Indian business family drama Shark Tank. A lot of new investments have been made.

The Start-up Story

Vineeta's husband and colleague, Kaushik, both worked at McKinsey before starting this business. They had high respect for each other's abilities but didn't know where to start. The two discussed Kaushik's inventive skills and Vinita's talent in product development and advertising. As a result, they decided to collaborate, with Kaushik working on an e-commerce project and Vinita starting a women's business.

Business and revenue model.

Sugar Cosmetics has a direct-to-consumer (D2C) business strategy and uses an omnichannel approach to sell its products, which enables Sugar to sell products on various e-commerce marketplaces such as Amazon, Nykaa, etc. The huge revenue growth of Sugar Cosmetics recalls the offer of its goods for India and other commodity transactions.

Funding and investments

Sugar Cosmetics has raised $85.5 million in capital through four financing adjustments. On October 21, 2020, Sugar continued its Series C round of financing, which invested $21 million into the organization.

Challenges faced

The impact has been exacerbated by the fact that retail outlets account for 60% of their revenue. Following that, during Open 1.0, the group was pushed towards a net revenue target of not less than Rs 5 crore. According to Vineeta Singh, the group needs to cut salaries and rearrange work to deal with the problem. Regardless of the difficult circumstances, business productivity recovered by the second-last quarter of fiscal year 2020. While most retailers are reducing the number of their shops, SUGAR has gone ahead and expanded the number of its locations. This year the number of shops has been increased from 1000 to 2500.

Future plans

SUGAR Cosmetics prioritized hygiene and safety for its retail customers, creating five new brand-owned retail outlets throughout the pandemic. To strengthen D2C channels, the company is focusing on expanding its flexible app, which previously had 800,000 app setups in less than a year. Content marketing, strong alliances, and new items will all be on the agenda in 2022. Vineeta Singh, CEO, Sugar, said the company's current target is to cross Rs 300 crore revenue in FY22. In addition, she said that Sugar will be venturing into new segments, including haircare, which the business will soon join as a result of the acquisition of ENN Beauty.