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September 1, 2026
Pritha Pahari, The Core
1 September 2026
Reliance has spent more than a decade bringing together a long list of names such as Burberry and Tiffany & Co. to India. Its latest focus seems to be luxury celebrity brands, adding global pop star Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty and now media personality Kim Kardashian’s shapewear label SKIMS to its luxury brands portfolio.
Isha Ambani, executive director of Reliance Retail, has fronted most of these announcements herself.
Meanwhile, Nykaa, the beauty platform Reliance Retail keeps getting compared to, spent the last year going after some of the same celebrity founders.
In August 2025, Fenty Beauty moved from Nykaa’s platform to an exclusive deal with Reliance’s Sephora India and Tira. In June 2026, Nykaa answered by signing pop star Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty. A month later, Reliance landed SKIMS.
India’s luxury and celebrity-brand market is split between Reliance’s scale and Nykaa’s beauty expertise, with Fenty, Rare Beauty and SKIMS showing how ownership, reach and brand fit are shaping who gets the biggest names.
Big Brands, Different Bets
Reliance wins brands through scale (20,169 stores, 396 million customers) and ownership ties; Fenty’s move to Sephora India is less a market choice than an internal LVMH routing decision, given LVMH’s stakes in both Fenty and Sephora.
But Nykaa is holding its own by competing on specialism, not size; its beauty-literate audience and curated community pulled in Rare Beauty and Chanel.
The brand fit, not just distribution muscle, still decides who signs where, and some brands (like Birkenstock) skip both platforms entirely.
The economics behind these deals are harder to pin down than the headlines suggest. None of the three — Fenty, Rare Beauty, or SKIMS — have disclosed minimum guarantees, royalty rates, or sales targets for their India entries; these are announced as partnerships, not filed joint ventures.
SKIMS raised $225 million in November 2025 at a $5 billion valuation, nearing $1 billion in annual net sales.
Fenty tells a different story: $450 million in 2024 sales, now valued at $1-2 billion, down sharply from a $2.8 billion estimate in 2021, with Jay-Z’s MarcyPen Capital Partners in talks to buy LVMH’s stake.
Rare Beauty’s India entry rides on Nykaa’s own momentum; the company’s revenue from operations rose 29% year on year (YoY) to Rs 2,782 crore in Q1 FY27, up from Rs 2,154.9 crore a year earlier. In the last quarter of FY26, revenue stood at Rs 2,648.1 crore.
The Core has reached out to Reliance and Nykaa for their response, and will update this report if and when they respond.
Why Fenty Chose Reliance
Fenty’s move looks more like an internal one, according to Suumit Kapoor, a brand growth consultant.
LVMH owns 50% of Fenty Beauty through its beauty incubator Kendo Brands, a stake it has held since co-founding the brand with Rihanna in 2017. LVMH also owns Sephora globally, and Sephora in India is run by Reliance.
“When Fenty enters a new market through Sephora, LVMH is effectively distributing its own equity stake through its own global retail infrastructure,” Kapoor said. For a brand with that kind of ownership overlap, he added, the choice of partner is “close to an internal routing decision” and not a genuine trade-off.
That ownership overlap is itself now in a pickle.
LVMH has been exploring a sale of its 50% Fenty stake since October 2025, working with investment bank Evercore, according to Reuters. As of June 2026, American rapper and businessman, Jay-Z’s investment firm MarcyPen Capital Partners was reported to be among the parties in talks to buy it.
No sale has closed yet, so the Reliance-Sephora-LVMH alignment still holds for now, but it isn’t guaranteed to outlast the current ownership structure.
Fenty’s India journey backs this up. The brand’s first India listing wasn’t through Reliance at all.
It ran on Nykaa’s Cross Border Store, a low-commitment digital shelf that was discontinued before Fenty’s August 2025 relaunch, an exclusive omnichannel deal with Reliance spanning more than 50 stores across 16 cities on day one.
Kapoor doesn’t think of the switch as a deliberate strategic upgrade.
“The Cross Border Store listing may simply have underperformed on its own terms, without much marketing support behind it,” he said, adding that there is no clear evidence that Reliance stole the brand away.
Devangshu Dutta, founder of the research firm Third Eyesight, said celebrity backing only buys a brand little room.
“When a company or an investor buys into an early-stage celebrity brand, they are acquiring instant brand equity which acts as a top-of-the-funnel magnet and potentially lower CAC,” he said. “However, the ‘fame premium’ runs out if product and service execution isn’t compelling enough to drive repeat business and customer retention.”
Ownership decides the biggest deals before “competition” even enters the picture, Fenty landed at Reliance’s Sephora because LVMH owns half of each, though that alignment is shakier than it looks, with Jay-Z’s MarcyPen Capital Partners now the leading bidder for LVMH’s Fenty stake.
Beyond ownership, it’s a straight trade-off.
For brands chasing scale, Reliance’s tens of thousands of stores will get you reach. If brands want to chase community, Rare Beauty did by picking Nykaa specifically to tap its affluent, digitally engaged beauty shoppers and build loyalty. Some brands skip the fight altogether, like Birkenstock, which walked into India solo.
The Distribution Gap
Where Reliance doesn’t need an ownership story to make its case is scale. Reliance Retail closed the quarter ended June 2026 with 20,169 stores across 78.4 million square feet, 396 million registered customers, and 568 million transactions in that single quarter, up 46% year on year, according to the company’s Q1 FY27 earnings release. JioMart alone served 5,500 pincodes through its rapid delivery network in the same period.
Nykaa, by comparison, operated 324 physical stores across 105 cities as of its FY26 numbers, with a cumulative customer base of around 42 million, per its own disclosures and Business Standard’s reporting on the company’s results.
“That gap generally buys a brand not just bigger numbers, but reaches into places where a beauty specialist has no reason to be,” Kapoor said. For brands thinking beyond beauty into wellness, gifting, or lifestyle crossovers, he said that scale “is not a nice-to-have. It is the entire argument for choosing Reliance over a beauty-only platform.”
Satish Meena, founder of Datum Intelligence, a research firm, made a similar point on Reliance’s pull with brands weighing an India entry.
“With the kind of strength they have, they can always give a better deal,” he said, referring to Reliance’s ability to commit capital and guarantee scale that a newer entrant typically cannot promise on its own. He pointed to Reliance’s existing retail relationships, including Marks & Spencer, as part of the track record that makes brands comfortable signing with the group.
Experts say over the past two to three years, Nykaa has been the more prolific launch platform for major international beauty brands, while Reliance has had greater strength in international luxury and fashion.
According to experts, Nykaa reported more than 70 luxury-brand additions over the last three years, including names such as NARS, Prada Beauty, La Prairie, Chanel Beauty, Armani Beauty and Maison Margiela. Reliance, meanwhile, has built a luxury portfolio spanning Valentino, Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta, Tiffany & Co., Burberry and others, and most recently brought SKIMS to India. Reliance’s public disclosures do not provide a comparable 2–3-year count of new international brand entries.
Reliance is arguably a major gateway for international luxury/fashion, but calling it the default gateway for international brands overall is too broad.
Where Nykaa Still Wins
Reliance’s advantage on raw numbers doesn’t fully explain why Nykaa keeps landing brands too.
Nykaa built its beauty audience before it built its stores, using tutorials and curated storytelling to create what Kapoor called “a beauty-literate customer base that arrives already primed to trust the platform’s recommendations.”
That specialism is what pulled in Rare Beauty. Nykaa’s June 2026 launch made the brand available through its website, app, and 30 stores nationwide, and came from a company reporting its highest quarterly profit since listing at the time, per its own disclosures.
In a company statement announcing the launch, Anchit Nayar, Nykaa Beauty’s executive director and CEO, said the brand fit a “new generation of highly informed and globally engaged consumers seeking elevated brand experiences.” Rare Beauty’s chief executive, Scott Friedman, said in the same announcement that India was “a very important market” for the brand, citing Nykaa’s beauty community in the country as the reason to partner with it specifically.
Nykaa has run a similar playbook before. Chanel strengthened its India fragrance and beauty presence on Nykaa in 2025, Obagi Medical entered India through the platform specifically for its clinically driven skincare positioning, and Estee Lauder’s incubation arm has run its India beauty programme, Beauty and You, with Nykaa as lead partner every year since 2022.
Dutta pointed to Kay Beauty, Nykaa’s own celebrity line with actor Katrina Kaif, as an example of why platform fit matters as much as platform size. Contrasting it with 82°E, actor Deepika Padukone’s skincare brand on Tira, he said Kay Beauty had two advantages: it was priced for a much larger audience, and it had “Nykaa’s active participation across channels for merchandising and visibility.”
Not The Only Door
Reliance’s pull is real, but it isn’t the only route into India.
Reliance benefits from international-brand partnerships through retail economics, distribution and, in some cases, ownership or joint-venture economics. The potential conflict emerges because Reliance can simultaneously act as a brand’s market-entry partner and control substantial retail and digital routes to consumers. Public filings, however, do not establish that Reliance uses this position to disadvantage partner brands or competing retailers.
Meena pointed to Birkenstock, which entered by opening its own stores rather than partnering with either platform. Birkenstock and similar labels operate as single-brand retail; they can use India’s foreign direct investment rules to set up shop directly, bypassing the need for a local partner altogether.
“If the brands think that they have enough pull in the market and they can bring customers, they are opening these stores without any partnership,” Meena said. He added that most global brands take the partner route anyway because India, for many of them, is still a small share of global sales, and testing the market with an established partner for a few years is lower risk than building from scratch.
Kapoor flagged one risk worth watching no matter which partner a brand picks. Exclusive deals give a retailer more control. But Tira has also started building its own private-label products, including a colour cosmetics line, and sells them in the same stores as the global brands it distributes.
“A retailer can be a brand’s distribution partner and, on an adjacent shelf, its competitor, at the same time,” he said, a tension he noted that Nykaa’s marketplace model, without a comparable private label push against premium brands, does not carry in the same way.
For brands already tied to Reliance through ownership, like Fenty, there isn’t much of a decision to make. For everyone else, Nykaa signing Rare Beauty and Reliance signing SKIMS within weeks of each other shows this fight for celebrity founders in India is far from over.
(Published in The Core)
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February 16, 2026
Christina Moniz, Financial Express (Brand Wagon)
16 February 2026
Starting this month global sportswear maker Nike shifted its e-commerce operations to beauty and fashion marketplace Nykaa to address poor logistics, high delivery times and inventory niggles. With Nykaa in charge, the brand said, customers can expect free shipping on all orders and faster deliveries rang ing from twotofour days depending on the location.
The change comes at a time when Nike is struggling to cope with declining market share and operational and supply-side issues in India. Its physical store count in the country has dropped by half in the past ten years to 100 from over 200 a decade ago. Nike in India undertook major restructuring of its business between 2016 and 2019, closing 35% of its stores in those three years to take a more digital-first approach.
It’s not all doom and gloom though. The brand reported a 14% growth in sales in the fiscal ending March 2025 to clock ₹1,380 crore. But it is well behind competing brands such as Puma (₹3,274 crore) and Adidas (₹3,114 crore), both of which have over 400 stores across the country.
Given India’s size, the competitive landscape and potential, treating it as a secondary export market to be serviced from Singapore was a poor decision on Nike’s part, says Devangshu Dutta, founder and CEO, Third Eyesight.
Nike’s alignment with a local player offers important strategic lessons for global brands with big ambitions in India, especially those in the ₹8,800 crore sportswear market. Brands that have not treated India as an afterthought have succeeded in creating sustained growth and market leadership, says Dutta.
“Most of Nike’s global competitors have treated India as a market high consequence. Nike might be the leader by global revenues, in India is smaller than its global rivals like Adidas, Puma and Skechers. ASICS has a smaller base but is growing at 30% while Lotto is also looking to grow its footprint massively, observes Dutta.
Ever since Nike’s digital-first pivot, its customers in the country have raised several complaints citing delivery failures and poor service, with some deliveries reportedly taking weeks. Its decision to transfer its digital operations to Nykaa in India could potentially address these missteps and reverse the breakdown of customer experience, say experts.
Changing course
“The recent move feels like Nike acknowledging that India cannot be treated as an extension of a global system. It needs local infrastructure, local partners, and a model built specifically for how Indians shop online. Partnering with Nykaa brings local execution muscle that is hard to replicate quickly,” observes Tusharr Kumar, CEO, Only Much Louder, adding that the move is a maturity moment for global brands. “Scale alone doesn’t guarantee success. What matters is adapting to local consumer behaviour, logistical realities and service expectations,” says Kumar.
That said, Nike’s shift won’t be without challenges. The biggest one will be balancing scale with brand control, notes Yasin Hamidani, director, Media Care Brand Solutions. “While Nykaa offers strong reach and trust, Nike will need to ensure its premium positioning, product storytelling, and customer experience don’t get diluted. If managed well, this move doesn’t necessarily hurt Nike’s brand,” he states.
However, he adds that competition like Adidas and Puma, with stronger on-ground retail and omnichannel presence, may gain an edge if Nike’s visibility or momentum slows. “The partnership with Nykaa must feel strategic and not like a retreat,” he cautions.
Given that Nykaa is also a marketplace for other activewear brands, it remains to be seen how the platform maintains Nike’s premium customer experience. “On its own platform, Nike could control everything from storytelling to checkout flows and post-purchase engagement. Nike will now need to adjust to sharing customer data, promotional calendars, and operational priorities with a partner platform,” says Somdutta Singh, founder & CEO at Assiduus Global, adding that striking the right balance between leveraging Nykaa’s scale and maintaining Nike’s distinctiveness will be key.
(Published in Financial Express – Brandwagon)
admin
February 14, 2026
This episode of theUpStreamlife is a freewheeling conversation between Vishal Krishna and Devangshu Dutta, founder of Third Eyesight, with insights into the growth of modern retail and consumption in India, brand building and M&A, the balance of power between brands and retailers/platforms, sustainability vs growth and many other aspects, and is well-suited for founders and teams who want to be building for the long run in India.
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February 12, 2026
Vaeshnavi Kasthuril, Mint
Bengaluru, 6 February 2026
Global fragrance maker Bath & Body Works Inc. is betting on a reset to revive growth after years of heavy discounting and weak product innovation dulled its brand momentum across markets. The Columbus, Ohio-based retailer is pivoting to a “consumer-first” formula strategy centered around upgraded formulations, more disciplined marketing, and fewer promotions.
The reset matters as India is emerging as one of the company’s fastest-growing and best-performing markets and is also becoming a testing ground for how the brand evolves its retail model. India now ranks among Bath & Body Works’ top five international markets by growth.
“We’re seeing strong engagement across stores (in India), digital marketplaces and even quick commerce, which gives us confidence as we evolve the brand and introduce more innovation,” said Tony Garrison, global vice president at Bath & Body Works, in an interview with Mint.
The fragrance maker entered India in 2018 in partnership with Dubai-based Apparel Group and has since expanded to about 50 stores across major metros, while also building an online presence through platforms such as Nykaa, Myntra, and Amazon. Apparel Group brings over 80 global brands to India, including Victoria’s Secret, Charles & Keith, Aldo, Crocs, and Tim Hortons.
“We’re learning a lot from how the Indian consumer shops across platforms, especially the speed and convenience expectations,” Garrison said. “It’s helping us think differently about assortment, pack sizes and how we show up digitally”.
Even as discretionary spending softened, the brand’s franchise partner, Apparel Group, delivered double-digit sales growth in India and high single-digit comparable store gains in FY25. It reported a 26% year-on-year jump in FY25 revenue to ₹1,118 crore and a net profit of ₹20.5 crore, reversing a loss in the previous year.
Globally, Bath & Body Works’ earnings reflect soft consumer demand as well as margin pressures. Its revenue declined 1% to $1.59 billion in the third quarter of FY25, while net income fell 27% year-on-year to $577 million.
Reviving the fragrance engine
While legacy scents such as Japanese Cherry Blossom, Champagne Toast, and Thousand Wishes remain global blockbusters, the company admits it hasn’t produced enough new hits at a similar scale in recent years. Japanese Cherry Blossom is a $250 million fragrance.
“I think we haven’t done the best job of keeping up with some of the fragrance trends. We haven’t done a lot of innovation, and that’s what you’re going to see this year. This is a big change year for us,” Garrison said.
The company plans to elevate its home fragrance portfolio, bringing in more premium candle collections, gift-ready packaging, and deeper, more sophisticated scent profiles. The broader goal is to encourage shoppers to trade up within the brand rather than wait for markdowns. “We want customers to see the value in the product itself… not just the promotion,” Garrison said.
New retail formats
To test new retail formats, the company and Apparel Group plan to pilot a small “neighbourhood store” format of roughly 500 square feet in select non-metro markets later this year. These stores will focus heavily on core body care lines and hero fragrances, while creating a more discovery-led environment for first-time shoppers.
India is also emerging as a key market in testing how far premiumisation can go. Garrison noted that the company has not seen a slowdown locally: “India has actually been one of our strongest markets in the post-Covid period. Even when consumers are careful, they still spend on small luxuries that make them feel good”.
What experts say
Retail experts caution that the reset in India won’t be without challenges. Devangshu Dutta, founder of Third Eyesight, noted that brands often fall back on discounting when volumes don’t come through. He added that the personal care market has become intensely crowded, making brand clarity critical.
While the brand is leaning into quick commerce and smaller stores, Dutta cautioned that premium brands still need larger formats to build experience-led differentiation. “Neighbourhood stores can be spokes, but you still need the hub—the large store—to communicate the brand experience,” he said.
Race Intensifies
The turnaround plan comes at a time when rivals, including The Body Shop and Forest Essentials, are also vying for the Indian consumer’s wallet. The Body Shop plans to achieve ₹1,100 crore in revenue in India within the next three to five years. India’s fragrance market was valued at $1.0 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow at a 13.9% CAGR to $3.23 billion by 2033.
(Published in Mint)
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January 15, 2026
Sagar Malviya, ET Bureau
Mumbai, 15 January 2026
It’s mostly a tale of two halves for top western fashion labels in India after the runaway sales and retail expansion in the years soon after the pandemic.
While Marks & Spencer, Benetton, and Adidas are battling waning demand, Uniqlo and Nike are gaining fresh ground, reflecting wider choices and increasingly discerning buyers in one of the world’s fastest-growing consumer economies.
Spanish brand Zara is facing stagnant growth while it tapered off at Apparel Group, which sells Aldo, and Charles & Keith brands in India. Experts termed the divergent sales performance as a potential structural shift instead of demand slowdown in India’s fashion and lifestyle market.
Devangshu Dutta, founder of retail consulting firm Third Eyesight, said consumers have clearly shifted towards function, even as trend-led brands continue to exist though they tend to be comparatively smaller. Some brands are also finding it harder to set or even follow trends the way they once did.
“This is especially true for Gen Z, which stays closely tuned to global trends and acts as the primary driver of fashion adoption,” said Dutta. “While older consumers may have greater spending power in absolute terms, it is younger shoppers who shape trends and influence product sales.”
Growth slowed across most leading retailers and fast-fashion brands in the country in FY24 as high inflation and stagnant incomes crimped discretionary spending.
While the trend remained the same for many even in FY25, select brands staged a strong rebound. For instance, Nike India’s sales rose 14% in FY25, up from a 4% increase in the previous year, while Uniqlo accelerated growth to 45%, from 31% in FY24.
Revival after Festive Season
Even Lifestyle, India’s biggest department store chain, grew 5% last fiscal, rebounding from a 4% decline in FY24.
Uniqlo said it continues to see steady momentum in India, supported by strong customer response, retail expansion, rising brand awareness, and a strong ecommerce uplift. “India is now among Uniqlo’s fastest-growing markets in Asia and plays a meaningful role in the region’s overall business,” Kenji Inoue, chief financial officer and chief operating officer, Uniqlo India told ET. “The country’s young demographic, growing focus on quality, and increasing appreciation for functional everyday clothing have all contributed to this progress.”
According to the Retailers Association of India (RAI), sales growth in organised retail segments such as apparel, footwear, beauty and quick service restaurants (QSR) saw single-digit sales growth last fiscal year but the market has recovered after the festive season with double-digit sales performance.
“Demand has improved, but it isn’t broad-based,” said Kumar Rajagopalan, chief executive at RAI which represents organised retailers. “With more fashion options available, Indian consumers are becoming more selective, and growth is coming to brands that offer a strong value proposition and not the cheapest products, but those where prices are justified by innovation, design and quality.”
In FY25, Apparel Group recorded a 25% sales growth, slowing from a 37% increase a year ago. Inditex Trent, which sells Zara in India, saw flat sales compared with an 8% growth in FY24.
Adidas too saw its revenue growth rate slowing to 5% from 20% in the previous fiscal. Sales of M&S and Benetton fell 12% and 3% each, respectively.
Being the world’s most populous nation, India is an attractive market for apparel brands, especially with youngsters increasingly embracing western-style clothing. However, most international and premium brands have been competing for a relatively narrow slice of the sales pie in large urban centres.
(Published in Economic Times)
