Most people do not start companies in their fifties. Falguni Nayar had spent years as a senior investment banker when she left to found Nykaa in 2012, betting that Indian consumers would buy beauty and personal care online if someone guided the choice with content and curation.
The build was e-commerce plus editorial, and later physical stores. In a category long run by unorganised retail and grey-market imports, that combination produced the thing customers actually wanted: a place you could trust. Fashion and private labels followed.
She started her defining company at an age when most executives are planning to slow down.
Nykaa listed in 2021. The IPO made Nayar one of India's richest self-made women and one of very few female founders to take a consumer-internet company public here, which turned a corporate milestone into a national conversation about women building businesses.
The debut was volatile, as most listed internet companies' were, and profitability had to be proved rather than promised. What her second act really unsettled were the assumptions — about age, about gender, about when it is too late to begin.