“Colour! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams.” Paul Gauguin’s belief that colours express emotions as much as words or music does resonates in the eternal happiness that comes from beauty.
And, beauty is on a makeover now, with colour setting the tone for the $33.08 Bn business of beauty and personal care products in India. Colour cosmetics, which are like the final brush strokes on a painting, see a raging demand across the world, with the market likely to surpass $128.11 Bn by 2032.
Beauty beckons everyone, but beauty products remain elusive for most. “Beauty is not about the wealthy alone. Affordability is the biggest hurdle for people to purchase beauty products. This is where we chose to venture,” said Saahil Nayar of Mila Beauté — a brand built around ‘Made for India, affordability, personalisation, and performance’
Nayar realised the potential of the omnichannel route to bring the products within the reach of a larger cross-section. The rise in omnichannel brands in the beauty products space has been in sync with the growing demand for colour cosmetics painting a $8 Bn opportunity by 2035. A steady growth in the Indian economy at 6.5% projected for FY26, a surging middle-class that is likely to reach 1 Bn in strength by 2047 with an annual household disposable income exceeding INR 3.19 Lakh, set the perfect backdrop for growth in beauty and personal care products.
Nayar positioned his omnichannel brand of colour cosmetics at the gap where even the basic products fail to cater to a diverse consumer base in the country. Customers need products that suit them in tone, texture and transparency in terms of ingredients used. “This could be bridged only by a brand with which India’s young consumers could resonate, one that could embrace toxin-free, cruelty-free formulations and doesn’t cut corners on quality in the name of mass appeal,” he said.
Mila Beauté was designed to attract the early millennials and Gen Z segment. Whether it’s SPF-infused foundations or skin-friendly ingredient infused lipsticks, Mila Beauté creates cosmetics that are fine-tuned for India’s rainbow race of diverse skin tones, climate, and spending patterns, with a focus on ensuring that the price doesn’t sting.
“We aim to break the common notion that good quality equals high pricing. Consumers shouldn’t have to pay a premium to get high-quality makeup products that cater to their basic needs,” said Nayar, who cofounded Mila Beauté in 2024 with his long-time family Keshav and Sachin Chadha. From their base in Gurgaon, the trio began creating a label that caters to a generation long underserved by both legacy brands and indie upstarts.
“Most products from legacy brands are copied from those sold in the markets in Europe or the US. These are not customised for the climatic conditions in India. We focussed on this and created products tailored to the Indian conditions to make them skin-friendly,” he said.
While Nayar was seasoned for over 15 years in leading consumer beauty brands such as Swiss Beauty, Bella Vita, The Moms Co, Revlon, and Kama Ayurveda, the Chadha brothers were the brains behind Milap Cosmetics, armed with retail expertise. Sachin steers the company’s offline retail operations and Keshav leads product development and operations.
The founders built the business on four key pillars — Made for India, affordability, personalisation, and performance — and claim to have generated INR 59 Cr in revenue in FY25. Mila Beauté also raised $2.16 Mn from Rukam Capital in a Pre-series A round in March this year, to firm up its product portfolio and expand its offline presence across high-demand markets. The brand was valued at around INR 303 Cr (around $36.36 Mn).
From ‘Formulations to Face’, Mila Beauté is a vertically integrated colour cosmetics brand that owns end-to-end ‘Production, Distribution and Consumer’
How Hyperpersonalisation Helps Win Discerning Buyers
Early millennials & Gen Z, the target group for Mila Beauté, represents a $450 Bn spending power globally. The buying patterns are different from those of earlier generations.
Nayar sensed this discerning nature of the target group and aligned itself with the hyper-personalisation trend. Mila Beauté takes into account the skin tones, skin types, climates and lifestyles of the customers based in the Indian subcontinent. “This is where global brands often miss the mark,” said the chief executive.
Hyper-personalisation helped Mila Beauté create its market in lip shades and base product shades. The brand uses ingredients such as different types of peptides, hyaluronic acid, and mango seed butter that stand up to India’s tropical weather conditions. Segments like lip glosses, blushes, concealer and primer make up nearly half of the business for Mila Beauté, while the face cosmetics category is fast catching up with strong growth.
“We want to be there for the consumer through every step of their makeup journey. Our packaging speaks the language of Gen Z and young millennials in India 2, and all our prices hit the sweet spot,” Nayar claimed.
While India 1 is an industry expression for the thriving urban centres characterised by high disposable income and purchasing capacity, India 2 refers to the emerging semi-urban markets exhibiting moderate purchasing power, and India 3 covers the expansive rural hinterlands marked by comparatively lower purchasing capacity.
Mila Beauté is available on all major ecommerce marketplaces such as Nykaa, Flipkart, Amazon, Myntra, Meesho, Q Comm such as Blinkit, Zepto, Swiggy Instamart and Big Basket and other channels like the official online store of the company account for nearly 40% of the overall sales. The remaining 60% comes from the offline presence, with over 8,000 counters spread across India.
By leaning into collaborations with organic content creators and user-generated content, the brand is also gaining some quick traction among its core audience.
“Instead of hiring celebrity influencers, we are collaborating with creators who truly represent India 2 and love our products. This creates an inclusive creator community for our brand. We have also started our Mila Beauté Ambassadors (MBA) programme to engage college students, allowing them to try our products and participate in fun challenges and eventually become early adopters,” Nayar explained.
The Mila Beauté top executive shared that the company has partnered with IIT Kanpur, Symbiosis, IIM Ghaziabad and LPU Punjab for their ambassador programme. “We’re essentially taking a door-to-door selling approach, but in a modern way – meeting Gen Z where they are and letting them experience our products firsthand.”
The Role Of A Founder-First VC in Mila Beauté’s Rise
For Rukam Capital, the hunt for high-potential consumer brands led to Mila Beauté. This omnichannel beauty products brand ticked all three boxes of its investment playbook: strong founders, relevant products, and the right pricing. The early-stage venture capital firm pumped in $2.16 Mn to support its objective of disrupting the market for an emerging buyer class.
“When we met the founders of Mila Beauté, we knew we’d found a company that gets it. Unlike skincare, colour cosmetics function more like fashion accessories, led by trends, so you need founders who understand that both instinctively and strategically,” says Archana Jahagirdar, founder and managing partner, Rukam Capital.
Instead of interfering in the decisions of the founders, Rukam Capital tailors its assistance and guidance at crucial junctures. It also plays a critical role in future fundraising rounds, governance, and compliance. The VC firm serves consumer brands such as Go Desi, Burger Singh, Pilgrim, Upliance, Yoho, and The Indus Valley.
Mila Beauté plans to use the funds to go deeper into the Tier-1 market and expand its base in Tier II cities. A part of it will also be spent on improving its R&D, in-house manufacturing capabilities, efficiency of operations and quality control checkpoints while cutting down dependence on third-party manufacturing.
The funds will also allow the homegrown brand to firm up its retail footprint in high-demand markets like Punjab, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, and South India.
“With Rukam Capital’s support, we’re not just scaling the business – we’re trying to redefine beauty standards in India, making high-performance cosmetics accessible to millions,” Nayar told Inc42.
Drawing Up The Strategic Roadmap
“Expansion is our foremost priority,” said Nayar. “This will be a year of strengthening our brand presence and doubling down on our omnichannel strategy.”
The skincare infused colour cosmetic brand plans to roll out 44 SKUs in FY26 to broaden its product portfolio across face, lip and eye categories.
On the offline front, Mila Beauté looks to grow its presence by 62.5%, taking the retail counter count from 8,000 to 13,000 this fiscal. This expansion, according to the company, will drive a near 100% jump in one year, rising from INR 59 Cr in FY25 to double the numbers over the next one year.
The leaders at the company are clear about their long-term vision of emerging as a brand that redefined the affordable colour cosmetics segment and coming up as the first in this segment to cross the INR 100 Cr revenue mark within this year of operation.
“We want to be seen as the sole truly homegrown colour cosmetics brand made for India, with Indian skin and climate at its core. Since Mila means miracle, our vision is to create one in the beauty industry and change the way homegrown skincare-infused makeup brands are perceived,” concluded Nayar.
The post Is Mila Beauté Redefining Affordable Beauty For India 2? appeared first on Inc42 Media.
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