Why Has India Built Great Skincare Brands but Not a Great Makeup Brand?

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When SUGAR’s down round became public, the obvious story was about a D2C brand that had grown too quickly. But the more interesting question sits underneath the company-specific mistakes: why has Indian skincare produced brands with distinctive identities and pricing power, while Indian makeup remains dominated by assortment, distribution and price?

Both categories are growing at roughly similar rates. Yet skincare has created very different kinds of businesses, from Minimalist to Forest Essentials to Indē Wild. Makeup has produced plenty of brands, but far fewer that give consumers an immediate reason to choose one product over another.

The difference may not be manufacturing, capital or even demand. It may be authorship. Skincare has learned to sell ingredients, ritual, efficacy and identity. Indian makeup has become exceptionally good at putting products on shelves. The next breakout brand may need to do something harder: develop a point of view so distinctive that the product becomes inseparable from the brand that made it.

When news of SUGAR’s down round broke, much of the reaction focused on the fall from grace. A company once valued at roughly ₹3,000 crore (~$300 Mn) was now raising capital at a fraction of that valuation. The narrative was familiar: too much venture capital, too many stores, too many SKUs, another D2C brand discovering that growth and durability are different things.

There is truth in that story. SUGAR’s operating revenue fell 20% to ₹404 crore (~$40 Mn) in FY25 while losses nearly doubled to ₹135 crore (~$14 Mn). The company had raised more than $110 million and, at one point, had built a portfolio of roughly 850 SKUs and 2,400 retail points. It is now rationalising toward roughly 250 SKUs and around 1,000 retail points.

But SUGAR is also useful as a lens into something broader.

The fundamental problem with makeup is that it is remarkably easy to create another product and remarkably difficult to create a reason for someone to care about it.

A ₹499 (~$5) lipstick is not automatically connected to the brand that made it. A customer can like the shade, finish and price today and buy something completely different tomorrow. Winning the customer through advertising, influencers or a physical store is only the first transaction. The harder question is whether the product itself creates memory.

That is where the Indian makeup market starts to look very different from skincare.

Skincare has benefited from an unusually forgiving supply chain.

India has hundreds of beauty and personal-care manufacturers, many with catalogues of products that are ready or nearly ready to launch. A new brand can take a proven base, modify an active, change the fragrance and packaging, and reach the market quickly.

The rise of actives made this even easier to communicate. Ten percent niacinamide. Two percent salicylic acid. Retinol. Ceramides. SPF 50.

The customer doesn't need to understand the entire formulation. The label itself provides a proposition.

That has created an enormous mass and middle-market opportunity, with brands such as Minimalist building around straightforward, ingredient-led positioning.

But skincare has also found a second route to the top.

Forest Essentials and Kama Ayurveda persuaded Indian consumers to pay thousands of rupees for products by selling something that global brands could not quite claim in the same way: Ayurveda, ritual, ingredients, heritage and place. Kama’s Kumkumadi facial oil can sell for ₹7,495 (~$75) for 30ml. Forest Essentials’ creams can reach ₹8,195 (~$80).

Indē Wild represents another variation. Rather than simply preserving Indian ritual, it translates it, combining ideas such as champi, ghee and Ayurveda with contemporary dermatology and a global retail language.

The important point is not that these brands are better. It is that they feel different.

Minimalist does not feel like Forest Essentials. Forest Essentials does not feel like Indē Wild. Each gives the consumer a shorthand for what the brand represents.

Indian makeup has struggled to create that shorthand.

Open Blinkit or Zepto and search for lipstick, kajal or blush and the problem becomes obvious.

There is no shortage of choice. MARS, RENEE, Insight, Swiss Beauty, SUGAR, Elle 18, FAE Beauty and a growing collection of younger brands are competing across similar categories and price points.

This is not a quality problem. Many of these are perfectly good businesses.

MARS has more than 1,000 SKUs and 15,000 general-trade stores. Swiss Beauty has more than 1,500 SKUs and more than 25,000 retail touchpoints. These are distribution businesses built around affordable products and rapid access to trends.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that model.

The question is whether every makeup brand can win by playing the same game.

Look at the international brands that have created unusually strong identities. Fenty changed consumer expectations around complexion by launching with 40 foundation shades. ILIA blurred the boundary between makeup and skincare. MERIT built around the idea of an intentionally small, easy-to-use collection. e.l.f. watches premium beauty, identifies what consumers want and translates those ideas into accessible products.

Violette_FR takes the philosophy even further. Its founder has said she only wants to make products that do not already exist, which is why she has said she will never launch a foundation.

That is a surprisingly radical position in a category obsessed with new launches. If you don't have something to add, don't make another SKU.

Much of Indian makeup seems to have taken the opposite approach. The shelf keeps getting bigger. The reason to choose a particular product often doesn't.

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It is tempting to blame contract manufacturing for this sameness.

Indian colour cosmetics brands frequently use the same kinds of manufacturers. Components and formats move through global supply chains, while brands converge around whatever is trending.

But contract manufacturing is not the real problem.

Fenty does not own a foundation factory. What matters is the brief.

At some point, "I want a brown lipstick" has to become something much more precise. How much red should sit underneath the brown? How much grey? How much pigment should appear in one swipe? Should it glide or drag? Should it stain? How long should it take to set? What happens after lunch?

That is where taste meets technical capability.

K-beauty offers an instructive example. Amorepacific launched the first cushion compact in 2008. Korean manufacturers then helped spread the format globally, eventually producing cushion foundations for brands including YSL, Dior and Lancôme.

The manufacturer supplied technical expertise. The brand supplied the idea.

India increasingly has the technical infrastructure too. Intercos, one of the world's largest makeup manufacturers, operates in India and runs a colour-development lab in Mumbai. Brands such as Kay already work with sophisticated manufacturing partners.

The missing ingredient may therefore be less about whether India can manufacture an excellent product and more about whether a brand knows exactly what product it wants to manufacture.

The best beauty brands don't simply outsource formulation. They arrive with a highly specific point of view.

There is another argument worth testing: perhaps Indian consumers simply aren't willing to pay for authored makeup.

The market suggests otherwise.

Nykaa launched more than 200 global brands in FY25, including Chanel, Armani Beauty and Kylie Cosmetics. Reliance brought Fenty Beauty to India through Sephora and Tira. Nykaa has said that around 55% of sales for its top nine prestige brands come from outside the metros.

The willingness to pay exists.

The money is simply flowing toward brands that have already given consumers a reason to pay.

This is why Kay Beauty and LoveChild are interesting. Kay has moved beyond the easy "celebrity brand" label. Katrina Kaif's experience working on film sets has informed the brand's thinking about makeup that needs to survive lights and heat. Its GMV crossed ₹380 crore (~$35 Mn)in FY26, nearly three times its scale three years earlier.

LoveChild is attempting something different again: making the brand itself an expression of Masaba Gupta's identity and aesthetic. Its skin tint, with a built-in brush, is an example of a product where the delivery mechanism is part of the proposition.

Neither has necessarily solved the problem yet.

But they point toward a more interesting direction.

The next great Indian makeup brand may need to combine three things: a distinctive understanding of colour, technical mastery of how the product behaves, and a delivery mechanism that makes the idea tangible.

That sounds simple. It is not.

The clearest test case may be kajal.

If there is one makeup product India should have an unfair advantage in, surely it is kajal. Indians have worn it for generations. It is habitual, culturally familiar and already deeply embedded in the beauty routine.

There is no shortage of Indian kajals.

And yet one of the products that beauty enthusiasts actively seek out is Victoria Beckham Beauty's Satin Kajal.

Victoria Beckham did not invent kajal. She did something more interesting: she treated it as a product worth obsessing over.

The pencil is designed to be creamy enough to work and smudge, but capable of setting for long wear. Its colours include Cocoa, Cinnamon, Fig, Olive and Sea Grey, across different finishes. The shade range isn't simply a larger assortment. It reflects a particular view of what colour can do around the eye.

The product costs $35 in the US, roughly ₹3,000, despite Indian equivalents selling for a few hundred rupees.

And consumers pay it.

Beauty now represents around two-thirds of Victoria Beckham's revenue and helped the company reach its first operating profit in 2025. The kajal is reportedly its bestseller.

That is the distinction.

Indian makeup has become very good at assortment.

The next leap is authorship.

It is knowing exactly which brown you want, why it has that amount of red, how soft the pencil should be, how long the customer should be able to smudge it before it sets, and what the product should feel like when it is finished.

The breakout Indian makeup company does not necessarily need to be luxury. It could look more like e.l.f. It could come from a celebrity, a makeup artist, a retailer or one of the mass brands already on the shelf.

But eventually, the question will be very simple.

Why am I buying this product from this brand?

For the last decade, Indian beauty entrepreneurship has been remarkably good at exploiting what was already available. Contract manufacturing made launching easier. E-commerce made distribution easier. Influencers made discovery easier. Venture capital made scaling easier.

But those advantages are increasingly available to everyone.

When supply becomes abundant, the scarce resource changes.

In skincare, India found several ways to create scarcity around ingredients, efficacy, ritual, heritage and identity. Makeup has mostly created abundance instead: more shades, more launches, more brands, more shelves.

The next breakout may come from doing the opposite.

Fewer products. More conviction. A sharper idea about colour, texture, application and what the customer should feel when she uses it.

The great beauty brands eventually become recognisable without their logos.

You see the product and know who made it.

India has built the factories, the distribution and the consumer market. The next challenge is building the taste.

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Peeyush and Mohit

Disclaimer: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text belong solely to the author, and not necessarily to the author's employer, organization, committee or other group or individual.