Six Top Executives Quit Nykaa Since April; CEO Falguni Nayar To Lead Marketing Function

Six executives of beauty and fashion ecommerce giant Nykaa, including its marketing head, have reportedly resigned since April this year, following which founder and CEO Falguni Nayar will now spearhead the marketing department at the startup.

Nykaa has seen the exits of chief marketing officer Shalini Raghavan, senior vice president (VP) for retail Kingshuk Basu, senior VP in the fashion unit Sumant Kasliwal, VP Sachin Kataria of ecommerce business, VP for marketing and communications Shantanu Prakash, and Aditya Sandhu of business-to-business sales unit in the last few months, Reuters reported.

Nykaa didn’t directly comment on the departures in a statement sent to Inc42. “As Nykaa evolves into a multi-dimensional, multi-geographic business, leadership roles are being augmented with an eye on strategic realignment, cost rationalisation and growing complexity of the business,” it said.

“Given the criticality of the marketing function to One Nykaa, founder and CEO, Falguni Nayar will guide the function directly,” the statement added.

As part of these developments, Nykaa said it elevated Shailendra Singh as business head for physical retail – beauty in June, while he also continues to lead key omnichannel initiatives. 

“We’re excited to bring a strategic leader in Rozita Nouruzi as the CEO of Nysaa, our omnichannel beauty business in partnership with the Apparel Group in the GCC,” the statement said. 

Nykaa also said that it has hired a new leader to drive the next phase of growth for Nykaa Fashion owned western-wear brands.

The development comes at a time when Nykaa has aggressively started revisiting and restructuring its business model amid dwindling profit numbers and rising market competition.

In March this year, Nykaa saw the departure of five senior executives, including its chief commercial operations officer Manoj Gandhi and chief business officer of fashion division Gopal Asthana.

Following this, in April, Nykaa onboarded new senior leaders across its technology, finance, business, and marketing teams to spearhead the next phase of growth. 

Meanwhile, the entry of Reliance Retail into the beauty and personal care (BPC) market with its omnichannel platform Tira has come as a major challenge for Nykaa, which had started taking a leading position in this segment.

On the other hand, Nykaa’s fashion business is also facing pressure due to the competition from deep-pocketed players like AJIO and Tata CLiQ. 

During the company’s Q4 FY23 results announcement, Nayar emphasised that Nykaa was not chasing the highest possible growth for its fashion vertical but the “right growth”, which wouldn’t dilute what the platform has to offer in terms of “uniqueness”.

Some of the major metrics for Nykaa’s BPC and fashion businesses, including its gross merchandise value (GMV), saw a sharp decline on a sequential basis in Q4. 

Nykaa’s net profit plummeted 70% year-on-year (YoY) to INR 2.3 Cr in the last reported quarter. The company is expected to announce its Q1 FY24 results on August 11.

Shares of Nykaa ended today’s session 0.6% lower at INR 147 on the BSE.