Tata Will Disrupt Rs 1.5 Lakh Crore Cosmetics Market – Can Launch New Beauty Products, Re-Enter This Segment After 23 Years!

The coffee-to-auto conglomerate has plans to re-enter the highly pegged beauty industry, after exiting the market 23 years ago in 1998. The domestic market for cosmetics is expected to grow to $20 billion by 2025.

Tata Group to Foray into Beauty Business

The non-executive chairman of a Tata Group unit operating a chain of retail stores Trent Ltd, Noel Tata stated that going forward, their focus will be on beauty products line, footwear and underwear. 

“Extended product line and experimentation with formats for these products are in the offing as we see these as growth areas in retail”, he stated in an interview.

Thanks to market leaders like Falguni Nayar’s Nykaa, India’s cosmetics and beauty market is estimated to nearly double by 2025 from $11 billion in 2017, cites data from Statista. 

In 1953, Noel Tata’s mother Simone Tata helped create Lakme, which is the French name for Indian goddess Lakshmi, India’s first cosmetics brand. In 1998, Lakme was sold by the Tata Group to Unilever Plc’s local unit.

The Tata Group will now re-enter the beauty business, while the revenue from beauty, footwear and underwear category is pegged around $100 million, the market for which is of about $30 billion now.

According to Kranthi Bathini, equity strategist at WealthMills Securities Pvt., “These three segments would be low-hanging fruits for Tatas at a time when they are aggressively expanding stores and distribution channels. While competition is high in these segments, the pie itself is expanding rapidly as consumption bounces back in the economy.”

Trent’s Online Presence and New Formats

Under Trent, The Tata Group, which values approximately $103 billion or more, is considering to build new lines of in-house cosmetic brands, which can serve as a vehicle of growth, and new products in it can be retailed through existing outlets, the large ones like Westside.

Westside is Trent’s flagship chain of retail stores.

It can also be done through standalone stores or different digital channels. Speaking of digital channels, Trent had early on adopted the omnichannel model in the Indian market with TataCliq and has increased its online presence with Westside.com.

“I see the digital opportunity helping us reach more customers wherever they are,” Tata said, whether its browsing and buying online or at a brick-and-mortar store, cited a Bloomberg report.

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