Half of Myntra's beauty product orders now come from Tier-2 and 3 cities

The Walmart-owned fashion retailer is scaling up its operations to tap the BPC market, which is expected to grow $38 billion by 2028

The beauty and personal category (BPC) market, currently worth over $27 billion, is becoming one of the most significant opportunities for Myntra. The Walmart-owned fashion retailer has for the first time recorded about half of all BPC orders coming from Tier-2 and 3 cities and towns. About 55 per cent of the remaining orders now come from metros and Tier-1 cities.

“Beauty and personal care as a category is a big focus for us. We have been working on it for the last two years,” said Myntra CEO Nandita Sinha in an interview. “We have seen tremendous growth and scale happening in the category on the back of capabilities that we’ve built, as well as brands that we’ve added on the platform.”

Myntra competes with traditional players and online beauty platforms such as Nykaa and Reliance. The firm said that this year, its growth rate has been 2-3x that of the online market. It is scaling up its operations to tap the BPC market, which is expected to grow to $38 billion by 2028. The selection available on Myntra Beauty has grown 3x since 2020. It now has over 1,400 brands on the platform with more than 75,000 products, 200 international brands and over 200 direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands. Seeing the demand, the firm plans on adding over 50 leading international brands catering to specific consumer needs and niches in 2023.

“We are bringing together a set of brands for consumers which were so far not accessible,” said Sinha.

She said new emerging brands are growing 80 per cent year-over-year on average on Myntra. These include brands like Minimalist, Wow Skin Science, Renee, Chemist at Play, and Re’equil,

Sinha said Myntra will aim to make 70-80 per cent of the women consumers (3 out 4 women consumers) on the app, try out or experience Myntra Beauty by the end of the year.

As more men adopt skin care and hair care routines, Myntra is witnessing an uptick in demand for Men’s grooming. This segment grew about 135 per cent in January this year. Brands such as Beardo, Bombay Shaving Company, Forest Essentials and The Man Company are receiving traction from male shoppers.

The company has already entered social commerce and has been pioneering the next wave of fashion-tech concepts such as M-Studio, M-Live, StyleCast, and AI-enabled beauty skin analyser, which has been extended to hair as well. Myntra also built a product finder that enables it to personalise the offering across different categories for customers.

Such innovations and technologies are expected to give Myntra an edge over traditional players and other online retail platforms.

Unlike the setting up of physical experiential stores for beauty and personal care products, Myntra said it is leveraging technology to be able to create immersive experiences for customers. Its platforms such as social commerce and M-Live enable it to reach out to Generation Z and digitally native customers across different geographies.

“We were one of the first platforms to launch social commerce from Myntra Studio and Myntra Live at scale and we continue to build on those properties,” said Sinha. “These (technologies) make your decision-making process more seamless.”

Brands such as L’Oreal and Lakme also conduct live sessions about beauty products on M-Live every day. The platform is also helping new-age brands such as LoveChild and Masic to grow.

“In the beauty space, the bigger strategy has been the co-creation of different properties with brands,” said Sinha. “Like we did ‘Lakme’s Reds for all’, L’Oreal Lash Day. Our strategy is also to continue to enable D2C brands in the ecosystem.”