What Triggered The Good Glamm Group's Collapse? CEO Darpan Sanghvi Opens Up

The Good Glamm Group CEO Darpan Sanghvi on Friday admitted that the beauty start-up’s rapid expansion strategy backfired when it tried to do “too much, too fast, too big” simultaneously, which created a “momentum trap”. Ultimately, it damaged the once-promising unicorn, the founder wrote in a post on LinkedIn.

“Momentum is intoxicating. Until you drown in it. At first, it feels like your greatest ally. Every headline, every funding round, every big launch is a shot of adrenaline. And you start believing you can do more and more and more. But momentum has a dark side,” he said.

The group followed “too much, too fast, too big” approach. “These were the three levers we pulled – each powerful, each risky. Any two of them, we might have survived. We might have even thrived. But all three, together, at once? That was the point where momentum stopped being fuel and became fire,” he added.

The group was once a high-flying unicorn. But last month, Sanghvi revealed that Good Glamm Group is being dismantled as lenders move to sell off individual brands. The company, fuelled by an aggressive run of 11 acquisitions, soon found itself grappling with integration hurdles, mounting debt, and high cash burn.

Founder exits and delayed salary payments pointed to deeper turmoil beneath the surface. CEO Sanghvi has openly acknowledged strategic errors, turning the company’s unraveling into a stark lesson in the perils of unchecked expansion in India’s consumer tech space.

“You tell yourself you’ll fix the leaks after the next milestone. But the milestones keep coming, and so do the leaks. Soon, you’re running from fire to fire, never realising that the whole building is getting hotter. And somewhere along the way, you lose the stillness to think,” he further wrote.

The brands owned by the group, meanwhile, seems to be have become non-operational. As per Inc42 reports, , the websites of several brands under The Good Glamm Group—such as MyGlamm, The Moms Co, St. Botanica, Organic Harvest, POPxo, Vidooly, Good Creator Co, and BabyChakra—were found to be unresponsive.

The report also confirmed former KPMG professional Arjun Vaidyanathan's appointment to oversee the entire remaining process.

The beauty brand failed to pay salaries for the past two months amid a severe cash crunch and ongoing fundraising challenges. It also delayed payments for current employees, and the full and final settlements for former staff still remain pending.

The company even closed its Vasant Kunj office in New Delhi earlier this year. Operations were briefly relocated to a facility in Greater Kailash, but employees have since transitioned to working remotely, according to a staff member.

Founded in 2015 by Darpan Sanghvi, with Priyanka Gill, Naiyya Saggi, and Nowshad Rizwanullah joining later, the Mumbai-based start-up has secured $342 million in funding from backers such as Warburg Pincus, Prosus, Accel, Bessemer Venture Partners, L'Occitane, and Amazon. As of April 2024, it was valued at $1.25 billion.