Success Story Of Purplle: Fastest Growing Beauty Brand In India

In this digital age, everything is in our reach with just a one click on our phones. From medicines to clothes, one can buy anything anywhere on the internet. The same goes for skincare and personal care products, cosmetics, and fragrances.These industries are growing at a breakneck speed and that’s why more and more companies are looking to invest in such sectors. 

Purplle is one such e-commerce beauty brand that is emerging to compete with the bigger players in the industry. In this blog, we will discuss the entire  journey of Purplle and its founders so far and understand the reason behind their success. 

How Did It Begin? 

The introduction of the Purplle cosmetics brand in the market was nothing but a sheer business call by Manish Taneja, Rahul Dash and Suyash Katyayani to enter the beauty segment. If you take a glance at the market trends, the cosmetics sector doesn’t leave much room for customization for the entrepreneurs unlike the furniture and home decor space.

On the other hand, when it comes to getting electronics, footwear, furniture, or any apparel item online, most of the customers already have a certain comfort level with the horizontal marketplaces and mostly prefer to land on E-commerce giants like Amazon and Flipkart. 

The three men eagerly wanted to start their own venture but were in a serious dilemma – whether they should choose the furniture industry or fashion. However, while the furniture sector needed a comparatively higher initial investment, fashion was a segment, which already had big players like Myntra and Jabong who were emerging to be quite competent. Therefore, after a lot of discussion, the trio decided to launch a beauty and personal care brand – Purplle in 2011.  

Growth Of Purplle

Manish, Rahul and Suyash started Purplle with an initial investment of Rs 40 Lakh which later resulted in Rs 45, 000 of sales in the first month of their launch. All thanks to the trio’s families and friends. 

The company was trying hard to figure out the ways to scale the business and increase its sales till 2015. The year 2016 was even more crucial to them, which they dodged anyway, but this made the founding team realize that they had to do something different as 5 years had already passed.

However, when they decided to come up with a whole new business plan, the founders were left with only 50 lakhs in their bank accounts. Though the new business plan needed big decisions, it involved numerous risks too. However, the founding team was confident at that time as their biggest strength came from their data stack.

The data which they collected from different sources eventually helped them understand the consumer behaviour. Purplle then decided to be omnipresent, and this led to the brand opening its first physical retail store at Phoenix Market City Kurla in Mumbai in January 2017. 

Reason Behind The Success Of Purplle

Better understanding of consumer behaviour was one of the most important things that worked for Purplle founders. While other beauty brands with physical stores didn’t store many products and used to stock them randomly, Purplle stocked products after analysing the consumer behaviours, thereby customising their stocks according to their preferences. 

Apart from this, the brand used efficient and quick technology, and also asked numerous questions to the buyers about their skin tone and problems. As a result, Purplle started to make good profits again and their gross margins were also good.

The company even witnessed 80% Y-o-Y growth in 2021. As of now, Purplle has reached a $1.1 billion valuation, joining the elite Unicorn Club.