This was hinted at two months ago, when it was revealed that online beauty marketplace Nykaa was in talks to acquire local discovery and e-commerce platform Little Black Book (LBB), and now, the beauty etailer has finally gone through with the deal.
The company announced that it has received the green signal from its Board to acquire the e-commerce platform as it looks to enhance its offerings and penetrate deeper into the discovery e-commerce segment. It is expected that the deal will be sealed within 60 days.
This is the latest investment made by the Falguni Nayar-led Nykaa, after the ones it closed earlier this year. At that time, its investment portfolio included names such as clean beauty player Earth Rhythm (a stake of 18.51%), nutraceuticals and wellness products company Nudge Wellness (a stake of 60%) and activewear brand Kica Active (a 100% stake) as it intensified the competition against rivals such as Purplle.
This acquisition seems to benefit both companies simultaneously – LBB can leverage Nykaa’s expertise to enrich the shopping journey of customers while LBB’s focus on fashion, home and beauty categories aligned with Nykaa’s own areas of strength. According to the ten-year-old Nykaa, this acquisition aligned with its “fundamental content-first approach to engaging with its loyal consumer base.”
The brainchild of millennial Suchita Salwan and Dhruv Mathur, LBB started its journey as a Tumblr blog where Salwan would document interesting places she discovered in Delhi. From there, it evolved into a thriving, online platform that quickly spread across cities and attracted the attention of investors such as Blume Ventures. Today, LBB reaches over 70 million users through their various channels and has ties with several local and international brands.
Nykaa feels that what helped LBB carve a niche of its own were its “discerning user base, content creation capability, curation mindset, and relationship with emerging brands.”
“We are excited about the strong synergies we share with LBB, because much like Nykaa, they have sharply focused on driving discovery and spotlighting promising homegrown brands across their channels since day one. We welcome their like-minded leadership into the Nykaa family and look forward to helping them scale, as together we better serve our audience base,” said Nihir Parikh, Nykaa spokesperson.
This development comes on the same day as Nykaa’s earnings report for the June quarter, and it was quite impressive for a time when companies have struggled to stay afloat and remain healthy. The beauty etailer clocked a year-over-year (YoY) rise of 33% to reach ₹4.55 crores, while its revenue for the period rose by 41% YoY to come to ₹1148 crores.
