With the launch of Reliance Retail owned Tira, the 💄 beauty marketplace space has become exciting.

Overall, the Indian beauty and personal care (BPC) market is the 8th largest in the world with a total value of $15 billion & is growing at ~10% as per the Euromonitor study. The market is expected to double by 2023. 

The Indian BPC market is 1/5th of the Chinese BPC market because of its lesser penetration into locations beyond Tier 1. This has allowed a huge amount of headroom to expand.

For a very long time, the online beauty marketplace segment was limited to vertical & horizontal players like Nykaa, Purplle.com; Myntra & Amazon respectively. But over the years, as Indian consumers have become aspirational buyers, curated marketplaces have come into existence, such as Maccaron, which curates K-beauty products, Vanity Wagon, a company which has raised $2.9M till date from the likes of Inflection Point Ventures & Venture Catalysts++ | India's 1st Multi-Stage VC curates clean, cruelty-free, and vegan beauty products. 

Smytten, a try-before-you-buy platform backed by Fireside Ventures, is trying to solve for the trust deficit consumers of India. Consumers can try out a product without making an uncomfortable purchase, and companies get feedback from genuine users. This helps bridge the trust deficit.