The boom in the beauty market has drawn big businesses like bees. But are they pulling their weight?
India’s beauty and cosmetics market is going through a major transformation as consumers look to beauty brands not only to enhance external appearances but also overall health. This transformation, coupled with rising disposable incomes, has drawn big businesses to the segment. Yet the infusion of capital from deep pockets has not resulted in substantial innovation.
The Indian beauty market was pegged at $20bn in 2024 and is projected to expand to $34bn by 2028. “The market for beauty is as big as the number of people in the country,” says Harish Bijoor, a business and brand strategy expert. This has led the likes of Aditya Birla Group, Reliance Industries and Hindustan Unilever to get into the beauty business.
Aditya Birla Group’s foray into the beauty market is led by Ananya Birla, daughter of group chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla. She launched beauty brand Birla Cosmetics in 2025. The 30-year-old has said in a statement, “The beauty industry in India is evolving at an unprecedented pace and consumers are increasingly seeking products that resonate with their individuality and lifestyle.”
Fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) giant Hindustan Unilever (HUL) joined the beauty segment with its acquisition of skincare brand Minimalist the past month. “The acquisition is another step to grow our beauty and wellbeing portfolio in high-growth premium demand spaces,” HUL chief executive and managing director Rohit Jawa has said in a statement.
Reliance Industries caught on the beauty market trend with Tira Beauty early, in 2023, and is set to launch an Ayurvedic beauty brand in mid 2025. The Tata Group, which has been in the beauty segment for decades with Lakme, introduced Zudio Beauty recently to capture a further segment of the mass beauty segment.
While big brands are eager to grab a slice of the beauty pie, they are doing little to add value to the already saturated market. Bijoor says, “All of a sudden, big companies are looking like ration shops of [beauty] brands.”
He adds that big companies want niche beauty brands coming out of their stables, but since they cannot do it on their own, they are buying out companies which show that kind of appeal.
The value that big businesses have brought to the table is their strength in distribution. Take the example of HUL acquiring Minimalist.
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Marketing and branding expert Akshay D’souza says, “HUL can scale Minimalist 10X faster and that can help the company. But focusing on research and development spending is the key to standing out.”
To actually move the needle in a crowded market, these big companies need to innovate and produce value-driven products. But as of now, the R&D spend of these big companies is marginal. In the 2023 fiscal, Reliance Industries spent just about 0.53% of its turnover on R&D. For Tata Consumer Products, that share was 0.33%.
Other majors also have minimal R&D spends. Godrej Consumer Products spent 0.29% of its revenue on research, Dabur India 0.41% and ITC 0.25%, according to a report by the Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs.
While the strength of big companies lies in their distribution power to facilitate modern trade and their well-established brand name to fuel faster penetration of products, their limited spending on R&D is their biggest drawback, D’souza adds.