Nykaa's Profit Triples to ₹101 Crore as Falguni Nayar's Beauty Empire Crosses ₹3,000 Crore in Quarterly Revenue

Nykaa, the beauty and fashion retailer built by Falguni Nayar, has reported the strongest quarter in its history as a listed company. Its consolidated net profit nearly tripled and its quarterly revenue crossed the ₹3,000 crore mark for the first time.

FSN E-Commerce Ventures, Nykaa's parent company, said on Wednesday, November 4, that consolidated net profit for the quarter ended September 30, 2026 rose 207% year-on-year to ₹101.19 crore, from ₹32.98 crore a year earlier. Revenue from operations grew 28% to ₹3,006 crore, compared with about ₹2,346 crore in the same quarter of the previous financial year.

The results confirm a shift that investors had been waiting for since the company's 2021 listing. Nykaa is now growing faster and becoming more profitable at the same time, rather than trading one off against the other.

Margins widen across the business

Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) rose about 65% to ₹263 crore. The EBITDA margin widened to roughly 8.7% from about 6.8% a year earlier, and gross profit rose 31% to ₹1,382 crore. Profit before tax climbed 168% to about ₹149 crore.

Consolidated gross merchandise value (GMV), the total value of goods sold across Nykaa's platforms, rose 30% to ₹6,151 crore. On the earnings call, management said the GMV the group now handles across all platforms works out to about $2.6 billion a year.

The company also pointed to its return on capital employed. Its investor presentation put ROCE at 27.3% in the September quarter, against 6.0% in the same quarter of FY24. That improvement reflects both wider margins and more disciplined use of capital, a point Nayar stressed to analysts.

"Nykaa has managed to achieve scale as well as margin improvement, and the capital efficiency is also improving in terms of return on capital employed," she said on the call.

Beauty remains the engine

Beauty, the business with which Nayar founded Nykaa in 2012, remains by far the largest part of the company. Beauty GMV rose 25% to ₹4,454 crore during the quarter. Net sales value in the segment grew 28%, and the vertical's EBITDA rose 51%.

That growth came from several channels: the online marketplace, the expanding network of physical stores, a B2B distribution arm and a growing portfolio of owned brands. The company said it had launched more than 330 brands on its platform over the past year. Management attributed the rise in average order values to premiumisation, meaning customers buying more expensive products, rather than to inflation.

House of Nykaa, the portfolio of owned brands, reported an annualised GMV run rate of about ₹4,000 crore and annualised net sales value of about ₹2,300 crore, up 36% year-on-year. Owned brands typically earn higher margins than third-party products, and they have become central to the company's profitability.

Superstore by Nykaa, the B2B arm that supplies neighbourhood beauty and personal care retailers, recorded GMV of ₹328 crore. Its registered retailer base grew 27% to more than 550,000 shops.

Fashion finally turns the corner

For years the main criticism of Nykaa's results was its fashion business. The unit grew quickly but consumed cash and weighed on the group's consolidated margins.

This quarter that changed. Fashion revenue rose about 43% to ₹287 crore and net sales value grew 47%. Most notably, the fashion business reported positive EBITDA. For analysts who have tracked the company's long effort to make the vertical self-sustaining, that is a significant milestone.

Fashion's progress matters because it removes one of the biggest uncertainties in Nykaa's investment case. A fashion arm that pays its own way leaves Nykaa as a group of businesses that each contribute to profit, rather than one profitable beauty franchise subsidising an expensive experiment.

A new acquisition in professional makeup

Alongside its results, Nykaa announced that it had agreed to acquire an 82% stake in Simply Nam, the professional makeup brand founded with celebrity makeup artist Namrata Soni. The deal is subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.

The acquisition fits Nykaa's strategy of building House of Nykaa through both in-house brand creation and selective acquisitions. A professional, artist-led brand gives the company a premium positioning that is hard to build from scratch, and it plugs straight into Nykaa's online and offline distribution.

"We continued to improve operational efficiency, particularly across marketing and overheads," Nayar said in the company's statement. "Beauty and Fashion are seeing accelerated growth, while House of Nykaa and Wellness offer significant runway for long-term growth."

Stores and the omnichannel bet

Nykaa's physical retail footprint is another pillar of its strategy. On the call, Nayar reiterated the company's guidance that it would expand to about 600 stores over the next few years. India's beauty market remains heavily offline, especially for discovery, and Nykaa has used its stores both to win new customers and to reinforce its brand.

The quarter also reflected a timing shift in the festive season, which management said had not dented performance. Analysts on the call pressed the company on whether growth in beauty could keep running at current rates. Management pointed to customer acquisition, premiumisation and new categories as continuing drivers.

Leadership continuity at the top

The results come in the same year that Nykaa's shareholders confirmed Falguni Nayar's continued leadership. She has been reappointed Executive Chairperson, Managing Director and Chief Executive for a five-year term running from February 12, 2026 to February 11, 2031.

Nayar, a former managing director of Kotak Mahindra Capital, founded Nykaa at the age of 50. When the company listed in November 2021, she became one of India's most prominent self-made women billionaires. Her decision to build a beauty platform at a time when most Indian internet companies were chasing horizontal marketplaces is now regarded as one of the more astute category bets of the last decade.

Her son, Anchit Nayar, serves as Executive Director and CEO of the beauty business, while her daughter Adwaita Nayar leads the fashion business. Together they represent a leadership structure that has moved from founder-led startup to professionally governed listed company.

How investors responded

The results were released after market hours. Nykaa's shares closed at ₹355.50 on the National Stock Exchange on November 4, up 0.45% on the day, with the stock trading near its highest levels since listing.

The September quarter extends a run of improving results. In the June quarter, Nykaa had reported a net profit of about ₹80 crore on revenue of ₹2,782 crore. Its first-half FY27 profit now stands at about ₹181 crore.

For the broader Indian consumer internet sector, Nykaa's performance is a useful reference point. It shows that a vertical, inventory-led platform with strong owned brands can deliver both growth and margins, a combination that many of the country's horizontal marketplaces are still chasing.

Why the results matter beyond Nykaa

Nykaa's quarter also says something about the Indian consumer. The company's growth has been driven less by price inflation and more by customers moving to premium products. That suggests urban and semi-urban consumers are willing to spend more on beauty and personal care, even as other discretionary categories have shown uneven demand.

For the global Indian diaspora and international investors, Nykaa is one of a small group of Indian consumer-technology companies with a track record as a listed business. Its progress in fashion and its expansion of owned brands are likely to be studied by other founders building direct-to-consumer and omnichannel businesses in India.

Nayar's own story adds another dimension. In a startup ecosystem where women founders still receive only a small share of venture capital, Nykaa remains one of the most visible examples of a woman-founded company reaching sustained profitability at scale on the public markets.

The road ahead

The key questions for the next few quarters are whether beauty can sustain growth of 25% or more, whether fashion's newly positive EBITDA holds through less favourable seasonal quarters, and how quickly the Simply Nam acquisition can be integrated into House of Nykaa.

The second half of the financial year includes the bulk of the festive and wedding seasons, which have historically been strong periods for beauty and fashion spending in India. If Nykaa can carry its September-quarter momentum into those months, FY27 could become its most profitable year by a wide margin.

For now, the numbers suggest that the company Nayar started more than a decade ago has moved into a new phase, in which scale is translating directly into earnings.