Falguni Nayar

Ms. Falguni Nayar Founder & CEO at Nykaa.com quit her 25 year career in finance to chase her dream of building India’s premier online retailer for beauty and wellness.

With a start in early 2012, Nykaa launched its online portal Nykaa.com by December 2012 and has since progressed to offering 300 leading brands on a single platform. Within a short span of 18 months, Nykaa has become India’s no. 1 online destination for beauty products.

Currently Falguni serves on board of a number of blue chip companies including Tata Motors Limited, ACC limited and Dabur India Limited. She also served as India Advisor at Temasek, a subsidiary of Temasek Holding Singapore. She was a Founding Member of the Asia Society in India, and a Board Member with Business Standard.

Earlier Falguni had a long stint at Kotak Mahindra Bank where she started with setting up firm’s international operations in London & New York. She was later Head of Institution Equities business and then moved on to take on additional responsibility as Managing Director of firm’s Investment Banking business. At Kotak Investment Bank, she successfully guided the firm to be India’s leading IPO Banker and was instrumental in closing a number of successful M&A deals including sale of Hutchison to Vodafone, Bharti – Walmart JV for India Retail amongst others. At Kotak she was part of operating management committee, a small group of top management.

Prior to joining the Kotak Mahindra Bank, Falguni worked as a consultant with A. F. Ferguson & Co. She holds a Master’s degree in Management from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, where she majored in Finance. She graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce degree from Sydenham College of Commerce and Economics. Falguni has received many accolades through her career including the FICCI Ladies Organization (FLO) award for top woman achiever in the field of Banking and Business Today award recognizing her as top 25 women in Business.