Earlier, business was considered as male-dominated field , but Falguni Nayar and her daughter Adwaita changed this narrative. Falguni Nayar, the founder of Nykaa, is one of India’s wealthiest individuals in India.
Adwaita Nayar, the CEO of Nykaa Fashion is daughter of Falguni Nayar, one of India’s richest self-made women. Adwaita studied at the Dhirubhai Ambani International School in Mumbai. She later attended Yale University where she did her Bachelor of Arts in Applied Mathematics and later earned an MBA from Harvard Business School.
In 2012, she was working as a consultant at Bain & Company in New York. However, she decided to leave her high paying job when her mother founded Nykaa, an online beauty and cosmetics retailer. Together, the mother-daughter led a company that later achieved huge success.
In 2017, Adwaita launched Nykaa Fashion, expanding the brand into apparel and accessories. She focused on offering stylish and high-quality products to attract customers. Under her leadership, Nykaa Fashion introduced several sub-brands like 20 Dresses, RSVP, Mixt, Likha, and Pipa Bella as per different fashion needs.
Her mother, Falguni Nayar, married Sanjay Nayar, the CEO of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) India, in 1987. Falguni began her career at A.F. Ferguson & Co. as a consultant and later joined Kotak Mahindra Group in 1993. She worked in mergers and acquisitions teams and also led institutional equities operations in London and New York.
However in 2012, Falguni decided to leave her role as Managing Director of Kotak Mahindra Capital and invest $2 million of her own savings to start Nykaa. When the company went public, Falguni became India’s richest self-made woman. Her current net worth is Rs 300 crores USD, according to Forbes.
