Startup Deep Dive : MyGlamm — the brand that outlasted its own billion-dollar parent

In April 2024, Serena Williams’ makeup line went on sale in 685 Ulta Beauty stores across the United States, backed by an Indian beauty company then valued at $1.2 billion. Fifteen months later, that company, the Good Glamm Group — parent of the cosmetics brand MyGlamm — was being taken apart brand by brand after its lenders seized what was left of it.

MyGlamm itself, the original ₹603 crore-revenue business that built the group, survived the wreck. What happened in between — an audacious content-to-commerce bet, eleven acquisitions in two years, a ₹917 crore annual loss, and a founder who published a public apology titled “The Momentum Trap” — is a case study in how fast Indian D2C growth can outrun Indian D2C cash flow.

Quick facts

What they do

MyGlamm sells colour cosmetics, skincare and personal care products to young, digitally active Indian women, through its own app and website, third-party marketplaces, and, since the early 2020s, a growing network of offline stores and shop counters across Indian cities. The brand describes a catalogue of more than 800 stock-keeping units spanning makeup, skincare and bath and body lines, sold under its own name as well as collaborations such as a Manish Malhotra makeup collection (company-stated, MyGlamm product pages, accessed September 2026). MyGlamm was the founding brand of a larger structure, the Good Glamm Group, which bundled it with content platforms POPxo and BabyChakra and, later, several acquired beauty labels, on the idea that owned media audiences could sell products more cheaply than paid advertising.

The origin

Darpan Sanghvi did not come to beauty as an outsider. After an engineering degree from the Maharashtra Institute of Technology in Pune and an early stint at Baazee.com, the e-commerce site that eBay later bought, he built Sanghvi Brands, a luxury spa chain that partnered with Spa L’Occitane and Warren Tricomi across India, the United States and the Indian Ocean region from 2008 (Wikipedia, Darpan Sanghvi, accessed September 2026; The CEO Magazine, accessed September 2026). That put him inside the operating and retail side of premium beauty for years before he ever sold a lipstick of his own.

The insight that became MyGlamm, launched in 2015, was that India’s beauty consumer had moved online faster than the industry serving her had. Sanghvi’s first version of that bet was an on-demand, at-home beauty services app — book a stylist the way you would book a cab. It did not scale the way a product business could, and by 2017 the company had pivoted into direct-to-consumer cosmetics, manufacturing and selling its own makeup and skincare rather than dispatching people to apply someone else’s (Wikipedia, Darpan Sanghvi, accessed September 2026; foundervoice.world, accessed September 2026).

The struggle years

The service-to-product pivot in 2017 was the first near-death: an on-demand model that could not be scaled profitably had to be abandoned outright rather than incrementally fixed, a costly and unglamorous restart for a two-year-old company. The second, far larger crisis arrived seven years later and took the entire group down with it, not just one product line.

• 2017: on-demand beauty-services model shelved; MyGlamm rebuilt as a direct-to-consumer cosmetics manufacturer (Wikipedia, Darpan Sanghvi, accessed September 2026).
• January 2025: Good Glamm Group cut roughly 150 jobs, about 15% of headcount, taking staff strength down to approximately 850 from around 1,000, alongside a town hall warning of salary delays (Grapevine, 2025; Vygrnews, 2025).
• April–June 2025: salary payments to remaining employees were delayed for at least two consecutive months, and vendor payments fell into default (Outlook Business, “Employee Salaries Delayed,” 2025; Entrackr, July 2025).
• 2025: the group put Organic Harvest, The Moms Co and St. Botanica up for sale, and sold Sirona back to its own founders for ₹150 crore — well below the roughly ₹450 crore it had paid to acquire the brand in October 2024 — and ScoopWhoop for ₹18–20 crore against a reported ₹100 crore purchase price (Entrackr, July 2025; Outlook Business, “Lost Glamour,” 2025).

None of this was softened by the company at the time it happened. Sanghvi later wrote publicly that the group had pursued “too much, too fast, too big,” and that unwinding it was, in his words, his “moral responsibility” (Business Standard, 1 August 2025; Outlook Business, “Lost Glamour,” 2025).

The turning point

The event that changed MyGlamm’s trajectory was not a funding round but an acquisition of a media company. In August 2020, Sanghvi bought POPxo, the women’s content platform founded by Priyanka Gill, along with its influencer-marketing arm Plixxo. The logic was not a roll-up for its own sake: POPxo was, in effect, MyGlamm’s most efficient customer-acquisition channel, bought outright instead of rented through Facebook and Google ads.

The founder’s own numbers, given in interviews shortly after, show the scale of the shift. MyGlamm’s annualised revenue run rate had reached about ₹140 crore by August 2020, up roughly 400% year-on-year; by November 2021, fifteen months later, that run rate stood at about ₹740 crore, and new-user sign-ups tied to POPxo’s audience reportedly doubled from 30,000 to 60,000 within a single month of the deal closing, with Sanghvi estimating $4–5 million a year in marketing costs avoided as a result (The Strategy Story, November 2021, citing founder statements). Whatever the precise multiple, the pattern was clear enough to investors: fifteen months after the POPxo deal, Good Glamm Group raised $150 million and crossed into unicorn territory.

The money behind it

MyGlamm raised capital across roughly a decade, first as a standalone D2C brand and then as the hub of the Good Glamm Group. Reported totals differ by source — Tracxn puts cumulative funding at $352 million, PitchBook at $306 million — a spread that reflects how differently trackers classify debt, bridge rounds and secondary transactions; no single figure here is treated as final.

• 2016 (Series A): about $6 million from L’Occitane International, Tano Capital and Brand Capital (search aggregation of BeautyMatter/Crunchbase reporting, accessed September 2026).
• June 2019 (Series B): $14.42 million led by Bessemer Venture Partners and the Mankekar Family Office, with L’Occitane participating, valuing the company at about $72.35 million (₹500 crore) (India Entrepreneur/BeautyMatter, 2019).
• July 2021 (Series C): ₹530 crore with Accel and existing investors (Wikipedia, Good Glamm Group, accessed September 2026).
• November 2021 (Series D): $150 million co-led by Prosus Ventures and Warburg Pincus, with L’Occitane, Bessemer Venture Partners, Amazon, Ascent Capital and the Mankekar Family Office, plus $15 million of venture debt from Alteria Capital — the round that made Good Glamm Group a unicorn at a $1.2 billion valuation (BusinessWire, 10 November 2021; TechCrunch, 9 November 2021).
• March 2024 (bridge round): ₹245.5 crore ($30 million) led by Warburg Pincus, at a flat $1.2 billion valuation — the first meaningful capital infusion since the 2021 Series D (BeautyMatter, 26 March 2024).

What each backer changed: L’Occitane was the constant thread from the first round in 2016 through to 2024, lending category credibility as a French luxury beauty house; Bessemer Venture Partners pushed the platform toward institutional-grade governance from Series B onward; and Warburg Pincus and Prosus Ventures, by co-leading the 2021 Series D, effectively bankrolled the acquisition spree that built the Good Glamm Group as a multi-brand company rather than a single D2C label. Those same three investor names — Accel, Bessemer and Prosus — resigned their board seats in 2025 as the cash crunch deepened, an unusually visible vote of no confidence from the people who had funded the growth (Outlook Business, “Lost Glamour,” 2025).

How it makes money

The mechanics are straightforward for a beauty D2C company; the group’s problem was never the concept, it was the ratio between what it earned and what it spent to earn it.

• Money in: product sales — makeup, skincare and personal care — made up about 93% of Good Glamm Group’s FY23 operating revenue, or ₹560.2 crore of ₹603 crore; service and content revenue, largely from POPxo and BabyChakra, contributed the remaining ₹40.6 crore (Inc42, July 2024, citing MCA filings).
• Costs out: marketing and sales promotion alone cost ₹466.2 crore in FY23, up 254% year-on-year, against ₹603 crore of operating revenue — meaning roughly ₹0.77 was spent on marketing for every rupee earned that year; procurement cost ₹269.4 crore and employee costs ₹420 crore, taking total FY23 expenditure to ₹1,559 crore (Inc42, July 2024).
• Where the margin sits: it did not, structurally. EBITDA margin was -92.37% in FY22, and the group’s own cost-to-earn ratio that year was ₹2.16 spent for every ₹1 of revenue (Entrackr, March 2023).
• The part people get wrong: because MyGlamm is a manufacturer of its own cosmetics, outsiders assume its margin problem is about product cost. The bigger drain, by the company’s own filings, was customer acquisition and the cost of integrating acquired brands — not making the lipstick, but finding someone to buy it and then bolting on the next company that claimed it could find her more cheaply.

A separate, smaller revenue path opened in April 2024, when the group formed a joint venture with tennis player Serena Williams to launch Wyn Beauty, a 91-shade, 10-product makeup line sold exclusively through 685 Ulta Beauty stores in the United States and at wynbeauty.com (PR Newswire, 4 April 2024; Digital Commerce 360, 11 April 2024). The commercial terms of the joint venture were not disclosed.

The numbers

Good Glamm Group’s own MCA filings show three consecutive years of accelerating revenue and even faster-accelerating losses. Figures below are in ₹ crore, consolidated, as reported in each year’s own annual filing.

One discrepancy is worth flagging rather than hiding: when FY23 accounts were filed, the comparative figures they carried for FY22 were restated to ₹231.22 crore total revenue and a ₹362.5 crore net loss (Inc42, July 2024) — both markedly worse than the ₹252.7 crore revenue and ₹272.8 crore loss that Good Glamm Group’s own FY22 filing had originally reported a year earlier (Entrackr, March 2023). That gap likely reflects consolidation of newly acquired subsidiaries into the FY22 comparative base; neither publication resolves it, so both figures are given here rather than one being silently dropped. As of this piece’s research, FY24 and FY25 consolidated filings had not been located in public MCA disclosures; a company-level estimate elsewhere put MyGlamm’s own brand revenue (not the full group) at about ₹400 crore for FY24, but that figure is a third-party estimate rather than a filed number, and is flagged here rather than stated as fact.

Where the money comes from

• By revenue type (FY23, Good Glamm Group): product sales ~93% (₹560.2 crore); services and content ~7% (₹40.6 crore) (Inc42, July 2024).
• By channel: online, through MyGlamm’s own app and site plus marketplaces, and offline, through a network the company states had grown to more than 20,000 points of sale across around 100 Indian cities, up from a stated 15,000-plus points across roughly 70 cities previously (company-stated, Indian Retailer/India Entrepreneur reporting, accessed September 2026).
• By geography: predominantly India, with the group’s own corporate materials citing additional operations in Dubai, Singapore and the United States (Wikipedia, Good Glamm Group, accessed September 2026).
• The surprise: the group’s one clear international move was not an export of its low-cost, content-led playbook at all. Wyn Beauty entered the United States through 685 physical Ulta Beauty stores — a traditional, high-cost retail launch fronted by a global celebrity — the opposite of the owned-media, low customer-acquisition-cost thesis that had built the Indian business in the first place (PR Newswire, 4 April 2024).

The risks

• Collateralised debt risk: the group’s 2025 breakup was triggered by lenders enforcing charge over individual brand assets after refinancing talks failed, letting creditors dismantle a multi-brand company one label at a time rather than negotiate with it as a whole (Entrackr, July 2025).
• Roll-up integration risk: acquired media properties did not convert into beauty sales as planned — ScoopWhoop’s largely male readership sat awkwardly next to a cosmetics catalogue, and celebrity-content platform MissMalini could not be turned into a commerce engine, despite the group having paid roughly ₹450 crore for Sirona alone in October 2024 (Outlook Business, “Lost Glamour,” 2025; Wikipedia, Good Glamm Group, accessed September 2026).
• Marketing-dependent unit economics: marketing and sales promotion consumed 77% of FY23 operating revenue (₹466.2 crore of ₹603 crore), a level of spend that produced an EBITDA margin of -92.37% as recently as FY22 — a business that could not fund its own growth from its own sales (Inc42, July 2024; Entrackr, March 2023).

The takeaway

The lesson in MyGlamm’s story is not that content-to-commerce was a bad idea, or that acquiring a media platform to cut customer acquisition cost was wrong — the POPxo deal, on the founder’s own numbers, worked. The lesson is in what came after it worked once: a single successful acquisition became a template applied eleven times over, funded increasingly by debt and equity rather than by the operating cash the first deal had actually generated. A business can survive being wrong about one bet. It struggles to survive being right about the first one and concluding that means it will be right about the next ten.

Frequently asked questions

What does MyGlamm sell?

MyGlamm sells colour cosmetics, skincare and personal care products, with a catalogue the company describes as more than 800 stock-keeping units, sold through its own app and website, marketplaces, and more than 20,000 offline points of sale across roughly 100 Indian cities (company-stated, accessed September 2026).

Is MyGlamm the same company as the Good Glamm Group?

No. MyGlamm is the original beauty brand Darpan Sanghvi founded in 2015. The Good Glamm Group was the holding structure created in September 2021 when MyGlamm combined with content platforms POPxo and BabyChakra and went on to acquire several other beauty brands (Wikipedia, Good Glamm Group, accessed September 2026).

What caused the Good Glamm Group’s collapse?

A combination of a marketing-heavy, low-margin business (FY23 net loss of ₹917 crore on ₹603 crore of operating revenue), an acquisition spree that did not deliver the promised synergies, and a stalled fundraising environment after 2021 that left the group unable to refinance its debts, ultimately prompting lenders to force a brand-by-brand sale in 2025 (Inc42, July 2024; Entrackr, July 2025).

How much funding did the company raise in total?

Named rounds include $6 million (2016), $14.42 million (2019), ₹530 crore (July 2021), $150 million (November 2021) and ₹245.5 crore/$30 million (March 2024). Third-party trackers estimate cumulative funding at $306–352 million (PitchBook; Tracxn), though the two do not agree on an exact figure.

Does MyGlamm still operate today?

As the Good Glamm Group broke up in 2025, MyGlamm was among the brands affected, with the group’s shared websites reported as unresponsive at points during the process; individual brands, including MyGlamm, were slated to be sold to separate owners rather than continuing under the group structure (Entrackr, July 2025; reporting on the group’s dissolution, accessed September 2026).

Sources

Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).

• Wikipedia, “Good Glamm Group,” accessed September 2026
• Wikipedia, “Darpan Sanghvi,” accessed September 2026
• Inc42, “The Good Glamm Group FY23: Reports INR 917 Cr Loss, Sales Jump To INR 603 Cr,” July 2024
• Entrackr, “The Good Glamm Group’s topline crossed Rs 250 Cr in FY22, losses up 6X,” March 2023
• Outlook Business, “Good Glamm’s Lost Glamour: Inside Darpan Sanghvi’s Revival Play & Cracks in Its Thrasio Model,” 2025
• Outlook Business, “Good Glamm Group Troubles: Employee Salaries Delayed for Second Month Amid Funding Woes,” 2025
• Business Standard, “Good Glamm CEO Sanghvi blames ‘too much, too fast’ strategy for collapse,” 1 August 2025
• Business Standard, “Good Glamm Group looks to raise Rs 250 crore amid financial challenges,” 31 January 2025
• Entrackr, “Good Glamm Group to be split up as lenders enforce brand-wise sale,” July 2025
• Manifest Media, “Good Glamm Group breaks apart, founder pledges personal earnings to settle employee dues,” July 2025
• Grapevine, “The Rise and Fall of Good Glamm Group: From Unicorn Dream to 90% Valuation Drop,” 2025
• Vygrnews, “Good Glamm Group Faces Financial Turmoil: Layoffs and Leadership Exits,” 2025
• BusinessWire, “Good Glamm Group Raises $150 Million in Series D Round Co-Led by Warburg Pincus, Prosus Ventures,” 10 November 2021
• TechCrunch, “Amazon-backed D2C beauty brand MyGlamm becomes unicorn with $150 million funding,” 9 November 2021
• BeautyMatter, “Good Glamm Group Lands $150 Million Funding at $1.2 Billion Valuation,” November 2021
• BeautyMatter, “The Good Glamm Group Raises $30 Million at a Flat Valuation,” 26 March 2024
• India Entrepreneur, “D2C Brand MyGlamm Raises INR 175 Cr In Series C Round” and related BeautyMatter funding coverage, 2019–2020
• The Strategy Story, “MyGlamm Business Model: Becoming a D2C Conglomerate,” November 2021
• Tracxn, “The Good Glamm Group — Funding Rounds & List of Investors,” accessed September 2026
• PitchBook, “The Good Glamm Group Company Profile,” accessed September 2026
• PR Newswire, “Introducing WYN BEAUTY by Serena Williams,” 4 April 2024
• Digital Commerce 360, “Serena Williams launches direct-to-consumer makeup line Wyn Beauty with Ulta,” 11 April 2024
• Indian Retailer, “Why MyGlamm is Betting Big on Content-to-Commerce Model,” accessed September 2026

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