Last Month HUL announced that it is acquiring beauty brand Minimalist for 3000 Crore Rs. This makes it the largest all-cash D2C deal in India ever. And what’s interesting is that Minimalist is just a four year brand. It started during the pandemic, and in such a short span of time, it created so much impact. And Aman Gupta is right, when he says deals like these change the country’s future. But why is that? What makes Minimalist’s acquisition so special other than the price? Well firstly, it was built not from any metro city in India, but a tier-2 town Jaipur. All their 600+ team members worked out of here. The next reason why its special is that the founders held 60% stake in.
The company at the time of the exit, which means they will earn 1700 Crore Rs in cash. And finally, Minimalist was in a sector, which had cutthroat competition. Giants like HUL, Parle and Unilever, who are in this industry for decades, and don’t allow any new player so easily. So how did Minimalist do it? How did two brothers from Jaipur change the entire beauty industry in India? And what’s the real reason that HUL spent 3000 Crore Rs to acquire it. Let’s understand all this, in this video. The story of Minimalist starts in 2018 in Jaipur, when two brothers, Rahul and Mohit Yadav, decided to do something of their own. Both of them had a very rich experience of working in `corporate and running their own business.
At the time, both of them were working at CarDekho, holding senior positions. And before that, they ran a kids’ fashion business called Mangostreet, which they had sold to Hushbabies in 2012. So basically, they were comfortable in their careers, and now the itch was to build something big. With this aim, they started Freewill in 2018. It was a customized haircare brand, where they aimed to create personalized solutions for customers based on their hair type and needs. And so unlike traditional beauty brands that sold generic solutions, Freewill first analyzed individual hair profiles and then created on-demand, freshly made products. This was a very fresh approach, and this idea, along with their rich career experience,.
Helped them get into Sequoia Capital’s Surge program in 2019. Surge for people who don’t know, is an accelerator program, where young startups come to get guidance and some early funding. Think of it like India’s YCombinator. Now for Mohit and Rahul, this was a great opportunity. In just one year, they had sold 2.5 lakh products, and their user-ratings were crazy. Out of 30,000 reviews on their website, nearly 25,000 of them had given them a 5-star rating, so clearly the two brothers were onto something. But despite building a product that their customers loved, Freewill was shut down within just two years of it’s launch. Why? Because it was not scalable. See, building a on-demand, personalised beauty product is great for the customer,.
But at the same time, it is time consuming and expensive for the brand. And so, while its easy to make a small profitable business for a few thousand customers with this model, you can’t scale it. You can’t build a 1000 Crore brand, which serves millions of people. And with this idea, Mohit and Rahul started thinking of their next venture. While building Freewill, one thing both brothers had understood, was that the beauty and skincare market was massive, but it was built more on marketing than on products that actually worked. In fact, the Indian market was dominated by brands that pushed the “organic” and “natural” narrative while still using harmful or ineffective ingredients—a strategy known as greenwashing. This was the time when most of us believed those claims of being ‘organic’ and ‘natural’,.
We never really looked behind the shiny packaging to look at the list of actual ingredients. There were brands like Mamaearth and Juicy Chemistry- that were promoting safe-to-use chemicals and organic products but they were still in their early years and we didn’t have influencers like FoodPharmer teaching us about the ingredients of the products we used. In fact, according to one study, 79% of green claims made by these companies were either exaggerated or outright misleading. And because of a lack of awareness, these were getting away with using words like “Organic” and “Natural” on the front and stuffing their products with harmful ingredients on the back, written in a small font..
Now, coming back to Mohit, he had been a fan of The Ordinary, a Canadian beauty brand known for its science-backed, ingredient-first formulations. Unlike most beauty brands that relied on vague claims and celebrity endorsements, The Ordinary was completely transparent about what went into their products. There were no exaggerated promises—just clear information about what worked and why. But in India, no one was doing this. And Mohit wasn’t sure if Indian consumers were ready for a brand that embraced science and research over the brands using marketing buzzwords like “Organic” and “Natural”. While building his last company Freewill, Mohit knew that customers were willing to pay for products that delivered real results, but will they accept a brand that is so ‘transparent’.
And ‘straightforward’, that they show the real ingredients on packaging itself. That was the big question? And with this, in 2020, Mohit and Rahul launched Minimalist with a single Instagram post—no influencer collaborations, no big ad campaigns, just a simple post to a few hundred followers which simply said “We are Live”. But under those three words was a quiet revolution – they wanted to change the entire beauty industry. They wanted to focus on clean beauty and move away from this blind march towards everything organic and natural. And along with this, they also wanted to educate people that not every chemical was bad and not everything organic was good for your skin. To start this revolution, they produced only.
1,000 bottles of a single face serum . The idea was to test waters and see if people are liking this fresh way of branding. Unlike most brands that hid their ingredient lists in tiny fonts on the back of the packaging, Minimalist made their ingredients the highlight—placing them front and center. They didn’t just list what was inside; they also explained why those ingredients were used and how they benefited the skin. They also challenged the myth that all chemicals are harmful. Instead of capitalizing on the “chemical-free” trend, Minimalist embraced science, showing that certain chemicals were actually safer and more effective than so-called “natural” alternatives. This was a very fresh and healthy change in India’s beauty market, and people loved it.
Minimalist sold out their first 1,000 bottles in just two to three days. This was even surprising to the founders, they had only 200–300 followers on Instagram and didn’t spend anything on marketing. And after talking to their customers, Mohit realised that a beauty YouTuber had discovered Minimalist, and she was so impressed by the brand’s transparency that she did a a community post about trying their products. Soon other beauty influencers had also picked up Minimalist, leading to a snowball effect and within 2 months of launch, the company had 10,000 followers on their Instagram page. But not everyone was impressed. Some people accused Minimalist of copying The Ordinary..
Even in their early days, Minimalist had divided opinions. Some loved the honesty and education around good and bad chemicals, while others criticized them for being a copycat. But here’s the thing – Minimalist never tried to hide the fact they were inspired by The Ordinary. Remember the company’s first-ever Instagram post? If you look under it in their caption, you’ll notice that they talked about The Ordinary being their inspiration. And when Raj Shamani asked Mohit about this in a podcast, he didn’t deny it. Here’s what he said. Mohit clearly accepted that Minimalist wouldn’t exist if The Ordinary was in India. But since no one was doing it, Minimalist was born as an experiment to see if Indian consumers were ready to accept a science-backed, transparent skincare brand.
But it didn’t matter, if people talked good or bad about the company, all this publicity helped Minimalist in the early days, helping them get more and more eyeballs. At this point, most brands would have taken this momentum and poured money into marketing to keep fuelling growth. But Mohit took a different approach. Instead of paying influencers and running massive ad campaigns, he waited for real customer reviews and testimonials—and then used them as “real influencer” marketing. So, while most successful brands like Mamaearth were sending their products for free to influencers and getting reviews, Minimalist was asking their real customers, who had paid to buy their products for their testimonials and videos. This approach of using real customers as their influencers on social media helped The Minimalist.
Stand out in a crowded beauty care market – making Minimalist more authentic. And it also saved them a lot of money. For eg. Minimalist’s total marketing spend was just 25% of their revenue, compared to the 40–50% for most D2C beauty brands. And The reason they could spend less on marketing was that their product was really good and people kept coming back. Their repeat rate was 60%, nearly three times the industry average of 16–22%. And this led to higher ROAS or returns on marketing spend. Minimalist’s ROAS even today is 4, which means for every 1 rupee spent on marketing, they make 4 rupees in revenue. And for most other big brands including Mamaearth, this number ranges from 1.5 to 3. Thanks to this lean and efficient approach,.
Minimalist hit 100 crore rupees on revenue in just 8 months, which is a rare feat for an Indian D2C brand. Mamaearth for comparison, took three years for this. Now if I plot Minimalists financials on a graph, there’s something interesting. You see these blue bars? That’s their revenue – which has doubled almost every year. Now see these tiny black bars which are more like dots next to them? That’s their profit. And while their revenues has increased constantly, their profit margins have actually gone down from 20% to just 3% from FY21 to FY24. But why is that happening? For most D2C brands, marketing cost is usually the reason for profits falling down. But we have seen that Minimalists’ marketing spend is much lower than the industry standard. Also their repeat rate and ROAS is much better..
So, what’s the real issue? The answer is their Cost of Goods Sold or COGS. COGS is basically money spent on manufacturing the products. For Minimalist, COGS stands at 35%, leaving them with a 65% gross margin. This number for Mamaearth and SUGAR for comparison, is 70% and 72%. And According to Mohit, most beauty brands operate with margins close to 90%. So why is Minimalist spending more and not focussing on increasing their gross margins? The answer lies in product quality and control. Unlike many companies who outsource manufacturing, Minimalist owns their production facilities, allowing full control over quality. They also spend 40 to 50% more to procure premium ingredients and invest heavily in R&D to ensure their products actually work..
See, manufacturing such products is hard, and it is also expensive. So what many companies do, is instead of making them on their own, they send their product formula to a contract manufacturer and get them made made. This is less hassle and also cheaper than doing it on your own. But Minimalist was against it from day 1. Mohit himself has said that since they spend more on their products, they don’t need to spend as much on marketing. And if this sounds similar because that’s the exact strategy used by Tesla. They are the biggest automobile company (by valaution) on this planet and they’ve never spent a single dollar on marketing. Just listen to Elon talk about. If your customers love your products, they’ll do the marketing for you. And that’s exactly what happened with Minimalist..
Another factor contributing to Minimalist’s financial efficiency is their tight product range. Minimalist started with just one face serum. For them, the idea was to have a few hero products that their customers loved using instead of having hundreds of products. Even today, they have only 66 products listed on their website. Compare that to Mamaearth and SUGAR, which have over 500 SKUs each. A smaller product range leads to lower inventory costs which leads to more efficient operations. This strategy ensures Minimalist’s capital isn’t tied up in inventory. Every product in their lineup serves a specific purpose, whether it’s for acne, pigmentation, or hair fall, rather than being a generic “fix-it-all” solution. Now, one reason Minimalist grew so quickly in terms of revenue, is because they were.
Completely online in the beginning. And this was a strategic decision by the team. Unlike traditional beauty brands that sell one-size-fits-all products, Minimalist’s semi-customized formulations cater to specific skin concerns. That means customers need guidance to pick the right product, and online platforms give them the space to educate their audience properly. Remember how Minimalist built their own manufacturing to control the quality of their products? With offline, they’d have lost the ability control the experience for their customers.If a customer walked into a store, picked up a Minimalist product without knowing which one is right for them, and doesn’t get the expected results, they might lose trust in the brand. That was a risk Mohit.
And Rahul weren’t willing to take. EVen today, 90% of their revenue comes from online sales. And I am saying 90% not 100, because now the company is slowly going offline. See, you can build a 100 or even 500 crore Rs brand online in India, but to become even bigger, you need to go offline. If you want to compete with the likes of HUL, Nestle or ITC, you have to offline, as that’s where the majority of India still shops. This is probably why Minimalist first raised money from HUL and now is completely being acquired by them. This acquisition is worth 3,000 crore rupees, making it the largest all-cash D2C acquisition in India. And with the founders holding a 60% stake, this means they’re walking.
Away with over 1,700 crore rupees in cash. But why did Mohit and Rahul sell Minimalist? The obvious answer is that HUL can help them scale offline. HUL has a huge distribution network – selling million of products from more than 50 brands across 9 million stores in India, and Minimalist now has access to all of them. But distribution was just one reason. Another reason is because The Ordinary – the brand that inspired Minimalist has also now entered India. And in case you forgot, this is what Mohit had said about The Ordinary. The Ordinary came to India in 2022 by entering into a partnership with Nykaa, gaining access to Nykaa’s online marketplace and its 200-plus offline stores. And on top of that, The Ordinary also has a huge partner in global beauty giant Estée Lauder,.
Which means they now have access to a lot of cash to make their mark felt in India. Minimalist dominated the Indian market when it had no direct competition. But with The Ordinary now in India, Minimalist needs the financial and distribution muscle of a player like HUL to stay competitive. Now, the big question is— can Minimalist keep its lead or will The Ordinary take them over? Let me know in the comments. Also write your experience with Minimalist in the comments, and I will see you in the next one.
