Katrina Kaif's Kay Beauty: How the Nykaa Launch Worked
Katrina Kaif launched Kay Beauty with Nykaa in October 2019 as co-owner. How the deal worked, what it sold and what was never disclosed.
When Katrina Kaif launched Kay Beauty in October 2019, she did not go to a department store or a brand-licensing firm. She partnered with Nykaa, the beauty retailer, and became co-owner of a colour cosmetics line. Mint and Quartz covered the launch closely, and their accounts show how the deal was meant to work.
What launched
Mint described Kay Beauty as arguably the first colour cosmetics brand launched by an Indian actor. At launch it offered eye and lip products priced between Rs 249 and Rs 799, sold across 50 Nykaa stores, on the website and on the app. Quartz reports that the launch event in Mumbai took place on Oct. 22, 2019.
Kaif said in the Mint interview that the products were meant to be high-performance and long-lasting while caring for the skin. She gave an example: the lip crayons are enriched with marula and chamomile oil, so they moisturise while giving colour. The brand's tag is #MakeupThatKares.
A co-owner, not only a face
In the interview Kaif said she is the co-owner of Kay Beauty along with Nykaa and that she is involved at every level. She said she assessed formulations, flagged textures she found too dry or too light, and took part in marketing. She also said Nykaa's founder, Falguni Nayar, and her team gave her full freedom to build the brand.
Mint's reporting on other celebrity labels describes revenue-sharing partnerships, and Kaif herself mentions a revenue-sharing arrangement with Nykaa in the interview. The financial terms of Kay Beauty's partnership are not public in the sources we read, so we cannot say what share Kaif holds.
Why Nykaa
Quartz reports that Kaif chose an exclusive partnership with Nykaa instead of Amazon India or Flipkart, which gave the launch access to a customer base of about 10 million, according to the publication. It describes Nykaa as a seven-year-old company that sells more than 1,000 brands and serves over 30 million visitors a month, 60 percent of them repeat customers, and that runs 50 physical stores.
Quartz quotes Nayar saying that brand endorsements "in the traditional sense, don't work anymore" and that "what works is authenticity". Nykaa's plan, she said, was to represent its brand through what the company calls its everyday girl-next-door community, including employees, small influencers, bloggers and celebrities.
Advertising and next steps
Kaif told Mint that she wanted the conversation around Kay Beauty to be fun, informative and educational, and that she was building a community where young women could get makeup tips. She said she worked with the director Zoya Akhtar to pick the script and team for the first advertising campaign, and that the idea was to convey that every woman is unique and beautiful.
Asked about skincare, haircare or fragrance, she said "it's just the beginning", that the team was "definitely looking at other verticals" and that the timing would depend on when things felt right. Wikipedia adds that in 2019 she launched #Kare initiatives under the brand, a charitable programme supporting social causes including employment of rural women.
The star behind it
Wikipedia describes Kaif as a British actress working in Hindi films who has been among India's highest-paid actresses, and says she appeared consistently in Forbes India's Celebrity 100 list in the 2010s. It calls her a regular brand endorser. Kay Beauty was her step from endorsing products to owning one.
What we could not confirm
We could not read the FashionNetwork launch report, which blocked our request, so we did not use its product counts. We found no public figures for Kay Beauty's sales, valuation or Kaif's stake. The statements about her involvement are her own, given in an interview. We did not check the brand's current range or retail footprint after 2019.
Sources
*Cover photo: Laura Lee Dooley from Arlington, VA, USA, Wikimedia Commons, *[*https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:-IIFA2017_-_NYC_%2835751758582%29.jpg*](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:-IIFA2017_-_NYC_%2835751758582%29.jpg)* (CC BY 2.0).*