Nykaa
fired on all cylinders in Q1. The quarter saw the beauty ecommerce giant clock a three-fold jump in profits, expand margins and increase its footprint. Meanwhile, its fashion business turned EBITDA positive for the first time.
Here is a snapshot of Nykaa’s Q1 FY27 numbers:
The Beauty Upside: Powered by stronger engagement, improving margins, higher average order values and a premium portfolio, the beauty business remained Nykaa’s core engine. The vertical contributed 90% of its total revenue in Q1. The quarter also saw Nykaa Beauty deepen its omnichannel footprint to 324 stores, while onboarding global names to broaden choice.
The Fashion Fiesta: Nykaa Fashion turned EBITDA positive for the first time on the back of stronger operating leverage. The business also managed to accelerate GMV and net sales on the back of a wider brand mix and sharper merchandising. Expansions into activewear, kidswear and footwear also helped Nykaa’s fashion arm move from a growth bet to a serious contender.
The Q-Comm Mania: The quarter also saw Nykaa scale its quick commerce platform to 13 cities, with a target to cross 25 by end-FY27. While domestic consumption remained strong, Nykaa’s Gulf joint venture, Nysaa, continued to face pressures due to geopolitical tensions. This dampened overseas acceleration.
The House Of Brands: Premiumisation push also remained high on the beauty giant’s agenda. Nykaa now plans to acquire a 51% stake in D2C skincare brand Aminu to fill the gap in its premium skincare portfolio and leverage the brand’s salon distribution. Together with earlier buys like Dot & Key and Earth Rhythm, Nykaa appears to be reinforcing its house of brands strategy across categories and price points.
As the beauty ecommerce major finally marries scale with profitability, here is how Nykaa fared on the financial front in Q1…
Industrial inspections can be a cumbersome task. Workers have to climb 30 foot tanks, enter confined spaces and face toxic gases just to check for cracks and corrosion. Octobotics wants to change this by sending crawler robots into these zones instead of humans.
Bots To The Rescue: Founded in 2020, Octobotics builds inspection robots for oil and gas, railways and other asset-heavy sectors. Its core product is a magnetic crawler robot that sticks to steel surfaces and can crawl across tanks and pipes. The startup’s bots also use phased array ultrasonics to detect cracks and defects, mapping their location, size and depth.
From Pilots To Scale: The startup is now building a unified platform under 15 kgs with interchangeable modules for UT gridding and weld inspection. Octobotics is also pivoting to a service model, with plans to add a SaaS reporting layer and eventually rent robots to third-party vendors.
The Road Ahead: Backed by Navam Capital, Octobotics counts the likes of marquee names such as Indian Navy, Bharat Petroleum and Indian Oil as its customers. The home turf alone accounts for half of its top line, with the remaining coming from overseas markets. The robotics startup is now targeting ₹6 Cr revenue in FY27. So, can Octobotics make hazardous inspections fully robotic?
From Myntra to Eternal, H1 FY27 saw several high-profile leadership transitions across the Indian startup ecosystem. Let’s take a look…
Source: Inc42 - Startups
