Thierry Delaporte, Deepinder Goyal, Falguni Nayar: Who was India’s best business leader in 2021?

Falguni Nayar, a former investment banker, heads beauty startup Nykaa.

If 2020 was about surviving amidst the carnage, for Indian companies 2021 was more about exhibiting the ability to innovate and soldier on in the midst of a crisis. The best companies did just that, as startups joined newly-listed companies and large business houses in finding a way to grow.

In all cases, these were companies whose leaders showed the way.

Several names immediately spring to the fore. Reliance Group supremo Mukesh Ambani and Adani Group founder Gautam Adani are among the heavyweights of Indian business who took major steps this year to jockey for leadership of India’s green energy aspirations. Similarly, Tata Group chairman N. Chandrasekaran pushed his conglomerate into newer businesses like chips and electric vehicles. In the IT sector which had another great year, Thierry Delaporte, the chief executive officer of Wipro Ltd, brought a new growth dynamic to a company which till a few years ago ran the risk of falling well behind the market leaders.

Others that deserve some credit were people like Deepinder Goyal at Zomato for the first successful tech startup listing that opened the door for many others. Sadly, Goyal’s good work was marred by subsequent actions that have left a cloud hanging over the company’s corporate governance standards.

In all of this, the one name that stands out is that of Falguni Nayar, the founder and CEO of the beauty and lifestyle retail startup Nykaa which listed with great expectations and has so far gone on to meet all of them. Starting off her quest in 2012, Nayar who is on the other side of 50, defied every known social and business bias to build a digital powerhouse. On November 10, when FSN E-Commerce Ventures, the parent firm of Nykaa, debuted on the Bombay Stock Exchange, its market valuation was more than Rs 1 lakh crore ($13.47 billion) and Nayar, who owns around 52.56 percent of the company, was almost incidentally worth $7.9 billion.

In their book Hearts, Smarts, Guts and Luck, authors Anthony K. Tjan, Richard J. Harrington, and Tsun-Yan Hsieh, themselves successful business leaders and entrepreneurs, identify a combination of these four attributes as the key to business success. Nayar has ticked off all the four boxes in her journey so far.

She didn’t stumble into business or turn lucky by spinning a wheel. After graduating from IIM Ahmedabad, she worked as a consultant with A.F. Ferguson & Co and then put in 18 stellar years at Kotak Mahindra Bank where as an investment banker she handled road shows for many businesses seeking to tap the markets.

When she decided to turn into an entrepreneur, she spotted the right opportunity. By 2012, India’s beauty and personal care business was poised for exponential growth. Nayar also identified the right demographic, the 25-35 age group. Nykaa’s growth came on the back of a strong social media presence using influencers and celebrities.

Recognizing that beauty is a category where physical trial is critical, the company took the call five years after launching as a pure play e-commerce brand, to be an omnichannel retailer even if that meant it would go up head-on against the large existing players in the industry. Today, by letting demand drive its growth, it has become a multi-brand retailer with more than 150 brands listed on its platform.

Significantly, Nykaa hasn’t set itself up as a discount-led business and that’s translated into healthy financials. For the latest quarter, its consolidated revenue from operations grew 47 percent year-on-year to Rs 885.3 crore and even though earnings dropped marginally, it will still end the year with profits as it did in 2020-21.

In this, as in the way she has used the capital she raised over the years, the refusal to cash out early and dilute her stake to single digits (post listing she and her family still owns 56.6 percent percent of the company), along with the robustness of the business model, Falguni Nayar has set the bar for other Indian startups.