A surge in growth of the cosmetic startup SUGAR

SUGAR an Indian cosmetic brand has to face tough competition with established brands like L’Oréal and Lakme. Despite heavy competition, the eight-year-old startup managed to reserve its position in the beauty industry. The pandemic has created a huge impact in the market, everyone is trying to figure out a way to cope up with the destruction caused by it.  At a time when retail and e-commerce companies are still searching for alternatives to deal with the impact of the Covid-19, SUGAR managed to extend by 60% from its pre-lockdown numbers.

Vineeta Singh, the co-founder, and CEO of SUGAR cosmetics expresses how the brand has managed through the crisis and has been able to eat its own estimates and bounced back. “November was, in fact, one of the most fantastic months for us. We sold ₹24 crores worth of products to the end consumer, which is by far our highest number and 50% of it came from retail, which was a big surprise,” Singh told Business Insider in an interview.

In March 2020, when the lockdown began they were in the middle of composing wonderful plans for FY21. She said that in FY20 they had achieved the ₹100 crores net revenue number. For them, it had been more psychological that they can’t go under ₹100 crores. But there came a point when they had been unsure, as the month of April and May had been very hard. As a company, they had always been close to breaking even and have been very conscious of our bottom line, but in the first quarter of FY21 they had seen a loss of ₹5 crores, and they knew they had to bounce back.

At the time when most retailers were reducing their footprint, SUGAR went forth and included more physical stores to its count. The number of stores increased from 1000 last year to 2500 this year. According to Singh that was their strategic move, they couldn’t have missed out on. She said that they knew they had to invest more. As they have increased their footprint before the festive season, they would be able to accumulate the seasonal traffic. Currently, the company is anticipating a 40% increase in net revenue by the end of FY21. Singh is plotting an ambitious plan for the next five years, she expects to flourish to ₹500 crores net revenue.

One of the massive things SUGAR capitalized on social media. They have realized beforehand that the customers were devoting more time to their devices and were interacting more with them through social media. They saw this as an opportunity to enhance their prominence in social media.