One of the largest deals to acquire a D2C brand took place in January this year. India’s largest manufacturer of consumer good, Hindustan Unilever acquired the skincare company Minimalist, a 90% shareholding for nearly Rs 3000 crores.

Homegrown startup beauty brands have been on a roll in India. Scores and scores of new age skincare brands have cropped up since the pandemic and all of them harp on the science of it. And their whole appeal is transparency. Transparency about the ingredients that go into each of their products.

Among all of them, Minimalist is the one that really stands out. It is an active ingredients based skincare company that sells things like niacinamide, retinol, Vit C, glycolic acid, and salicylic acid. It launched around the end of 2020, and within a span of eight months, it built a 1000 crore rupee  business. What’s even more surprising that the brand has remained in the green, meaning profitable, from the very first month itself.

For years, legacy brands like, HUL, Ponds, and Loreal have been selling products with similar ingredient--the only difference being they either didn't launch them in India or the kept the names hidden away in tiny fonts at the back of the bottles.

It was Minimalist that came around and broke that mould.

And now, seeing the success of brands like Minimalist, legacy brands are rethinking their strategy.

Case in point: Hindustan Unilever

The company’s has been wanting to turn its beauty and well-being portfolio into a “high-growth" premium category for a while now and the acquisition of Minimalist is a big step in that direction.

But how did Minimalist manage something that a giant like HUL couldn't?

Tune in.

**This episode was first published on January 27, 2025

Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Text us and tell us what you thought of the episode!

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.