Dot & Key Brand Audit: Nykaa Owns 90%, SPF Proof, ₹7.74/g

Dot & Key is the brand Nykaa ranks first in its own sunscreen category. It is also a brand Nykaa owns. FSN E-Commerce Ventures, Nykaa’s listed parent, bought 51% of Dot & Key Wellness on 28 September 2021 and reached 90% on 21 September 2024. The shop and the brand on its best shelf are one group. This audit starts there, then reads the packs.

Snapshot

Legal name

Dot & Key Wellness Limited, incorporated 16 March 2020, Kolkata

Brand founded

2018, by Suyash Saraf and Anisha Agarwal Saraf, Kolkata

Current owner

FSN E-Commerce Ventures Limited (Nykaa), 90% since 21 September 2024

Who makes it

Third parties only; five manufacturers across 14 product pages

Core line, selling price

₹387 for a 50 g sunscreen, ₹429 to ₹497 for serums, checked 1 September 2026

Financials

₹423.37 crore operating revenue, ₹56.09 crore profit, FY2025, registry filings

How it started

The brand dates itself to 2018, when Suyash Saraf and Anisha Agarwal Saraf began selling skincare from Kolkata. The owning company, Dot & Key Wellness, was incorporated on 16 March 2020. An earlier partnership of the same name exists on the register and most likely explains the gap.

One part of the story rarely gets told. A published profile says Anisha Agarwal Saraf grew up around her family’s beauty business, Joy Cosmetics. Joy Personal Care is the brand of RSH Global Private Limited, a Kolkata company founded by Sunil, Sanjay and Jitendra Agarwal. RSH Global is the manufacturer of record on seven of the fourteen Dot & Key pages we read. No filing we found links the two companies, so this audit sets the facts side by side and asserts nothing more.

The retailer that sells the most Dot & Key now owns nine-tenths of it; no filing we found covers the rest.

Nykaa’s Q4 FY26 investor presentation says what that means. Nykaa’s beauty business did ₹14,954 crore of gross merchandise value in FY26, and ₹2,788 crore of that, 18.6%, was brands Nykaa owns. Dot & Key alone was ₹1,790 crore, roughly 12% of all beauty sold on the platform. The same deck ranks it first in sunscreen, footnoted as measured across Nykaa, Amazon, Flipkart and Blinkit. So the company that decides what appears on Nykaa’s sunscreen page also owns the brand it ranks first there, and keeps the manufacturer’s margin. Nothing here suggests Nykaa disadvantages rival sunscreens; it is a conflict of interest disclosed, not neutralised. Nykaa bought a majority of Earth Rhythm in the same 13 August 2024 board resolution, so two skincare brands on its shelves answer to one owner.

What they actually make

Dot & Key makes nothing itself. Indian labelling rules put the actual manufacturer’s name on every cosmetic, so every product page carries one. We read fourteen on dotandkey.com on 1 September 2026; all name an outside company, and five different companies appear.

The Watermelon Cooling Sunscreen comes from Alaina Healthcare in Baddi on licence HIM/COS/16/227, the identical plant and licence number printed on Mamaearth’s Vitamin C Daily Glow Sunscreen and three of The Derma Co’s serums. A shared plant does not mean a shared formula. But a reader choosing between these brands on personality is, in several cases, choosing between products from the same building. One gap: the Mineral Sunscreen page prints a GST number, a tax registration, where every other page prints a manufacturing licence.

Now the percentages. Six products carry a number in their name; none of the fourteen ingredient lists carries one. On the two serums the active sits where a 10% formula should put it: ethyl ascorbic acid second and niacinamide third of 25, and niacinamide second of 27. That is consistent with the claim, not proof of it. The vitamin C in the Vitamin C + E Sunscreen sits at about position 22 of 32, so buy that tube as a sunscreen.

Sunscreen testing is where Dot & Key leads every Indian brand we have read. Eight of nine sunscreens publish an in-vivo SPF result to IS 17494:2025, the Indian standard adopting the ISO method that measures SPF on human skin. Each names a laboratory and five print a report number. Tamil Nadu Test House in Chennai, named on five, is NABL-accredited; CCFT Laboratories in Meerut, named on three, we could confirm only as a registered testing company. The Vitamin C + E Sunscreen publishes a measured PPD of 35.1 for UVA, where most brands print PA++++ and nothing behind it. No product substitutes an opinion poll for a test.

A brand that publishes its data can be caught by its own data. A brand that publishes nothing cannot.

The Barrier Repair Sunscreen shows the other edge. On 1 September 2026 its page title read “In-Vivo Tested SPF 50+ PA++++”. The result block directly below read “IN-VIVO SPF 51.62 / PA rating: PA+++”. PA++++ means a PPD of 16 or more; PA+++ means 8 to under 16, a full grade apart. A page error is the likeliest explanation, and this audit does not say the product fails its claim. It reports that the title and the result block below it give different PA grades.

Two more gaps. The Watermelon Body Spray says “In-Vivo Tested” and publishes no method, laboratory, number or result. No product offers a downloadable report, though the brand’s own guide to spotting a tested sunscreen tells readers to look for one, so every figure above is the brand’s account of a lab’s finding. “Dermatologically tested” and “Paediatrician Certified” are badges with nothing published behind them.

What Dot & Key costs in India

The four 50 g face sunscreens carry an MRP of ₹445 and sold for ₹387 on Nykaa on 1 September 2026. The 10% niacinamide serum, MRP ₹599, sold for ₹497; moisturisers ran ₹336 to ₹426 and face washes ₹214 to ₹290. The number that matters is price per gram.

10 g mini, per gram

₹14.90

50 g tube, per gram

₹7.74

Mini premium

+92%

Checked on

1 September 2026, Nykaa

The mini is the size that ends up in gift sets and quick-commerce baskets, at nearly double the price per gram. The Mineral Sunscreen at ₹584 on the brand site is ₹11.68 a gram, 51% above the chemical-filter tube for the same SPF 50+ claim. The vitamin C serum runs ₹21.45 a ml in the 20 ml and ₹19.70 in the 30 ml, so the larger bottle is the better buy.

For scale, Mamaearth’s sunscreen from the same Alaina plant costs ₹7.18 a gram. Dot & Key at ₹7.74 sits just above it and publishes far more test data. Does Nykaa give its own brand a better price? No. On the three products with a matching MRP, the brand site and Nykaa were within ₹5 to ₹13 of each other. The advantage of ownership is the shelf, not the price tag.

Who Dot & Key is actually for

Buy Dot & Key if you want a sunscreen whose SPF and UVA numbers are on the page with a named lab behind them, at ₹387 for 50 g. The price tier is Budget: the sunscreens that drive the brand sell under ₹400 and the serums under ₹500.

Do not buy it because the homepage title says “Natural”. The Vitamin C + E Sunscreen is built on four synthetic UV filters and titanium dioxide, which is how an SPF 50+ sunscreen is made. Dot & Key avoids “chemical-free” and “toxin-free”, to its credit, but “natural” and that ingredient list do not describe the same product.

Reputation and controversies

The most repeated error about this brand is calling its gross merchandise value its revenue. GMV is the sticker value of everything sold before returns and discounts; filed revenue is what the company books. Dot & Key gets called a ₹1,790 crore, a ₹529 crore and a ₹423 crore business in the same month, and all three are real numbers for different things.

FY22 to FY24 from Nykaa’s exchange filing of 13 August 2024; FY25 from registry filings.

The runner-up error is that Nykaa bought Dot & Key for ₹44.5 crore; that is the Earth Rhythm figure from the same board resolution. And Nykaa does not own it outright. The latest disclosure says 90%.

Those decisions were on the posts as they stood in 2023. None is a standing bar on a form of words, nobody has ruled on the pages as they read on 1 September 2026, and the council is the advertising industry’s own self-regulatory body rather than a statutory regulator.

Buying it in India

Dot & Key sells on its own site, on Nykaa, Amazon, Flipkart and Purplle, and through quick commerce. The brand-versus-owner question is the reverse of our Bata audit, where the brand and the listed Indian company are separate; here the retailer and the brand are one group. Unlike Campus, which runs its own factories, Dot & Key’s name never appears as a manufacturer. Its 8% to 20% gap between MRP and selling price is narrower than our Metro audit found in footwear, so a listing far below ₹387 for a 50 g sunscreen deserves a second look.

Common questions

How we research and verify brand audits: our methodology.

References

1. Nykaa, Outcome of Board Meeting on Acquisition, 13 August 2024 — the 39% purchase for ₹265.3 crore, the Earth Rhythm acquisition, and Dot & Key’s turnover for FY22 to FY24
2. Business Standard, 22 October 2021 — the 51% acquisition of 28 September 2021 and its consideration
3. Inc42, September 2024 — completion of the 39% purchase on 21 September 2024
4. Nykaa, Investor Presentation Q4 FY26, May 2026 — beauty GMV of ₹14,954 crore, owned-brand GMV of ₹2,788 crore, Dot & Key GMV of ₹1,790 crore, and the category ranking with its footnote
5. Nykaa, Integrated Annual Report 2024-25 — the September 2021 acquisition date and FY25 owned-brand share
6. Tofler, Dot and Key Wellness — incorporation date, registered office and directors
7. TheCompanyCheck, Dot & Key Wellness Limited — current legal name and the ₹427.59 crore FY25 figure
8. Startuppedia, FY25 financials from MCA filings — ₹423.37 crore operating revenue and ₹56.09 crore profit
9. Inc42, on Dot & Key’s ₹529 crore — FY25 net sales value
10. Startuppedia, founder profile — the 2018 founding in Kolkata and the co-founder’s family business, Joy Cosmetics
11. RSH Global, leadership page — Joy Personal Care as RSH Global’s brand and its three Agarwal founders
12. Dot & Key, Watermelon Cooling Sunscreen, read 1 September 2026 — Alaina Healthcare, licence HIM/COS/16/227, and the published SPF result
13. Dot & Key, Vitamin C + E Sunscreen, read 1 September 2026 — Hitech Formulations, the PPD of 35.1, the ingredient list, and the ₹445 MRP
14. Dot & Key, Vitamin C + E 100% Mineral Sunscreen, read 1 September 2026 — the GST number in place of a licence, the badges and the ₹584 price
15. Dot & Key, Barrier Repair Sunscreen, read 1 September 2026 — PA++++ in the title, PA+++ in the result block
16. Dot & Key, Watermelon Cooling Body Spray, read 1 September 2026 — “In-Vivo Tested” with no published method or result
17. Dot & Key, 10% Vitamin C + E Face Serum, read 1 September 2026 — ingredient order, RSH Global Kolkata, and the ₹591 price for 30 ml
18. Dot & Key, Strawberry Bright 10% Niacinamide Serum, read 1 September 2026 — ingredient order and manufacturer
19. Dot & Key, guide to identifying an in-vivo tested sunscreen — the brand’s own advice to look for test reports online
20. Tamil Nadu Test House, cosmetics testing services — NABL accreditation and SPF testing
21. CDSCO, Frequently Asked Questions on Cosmetics — Rule 34 labelling requirements and state-granted manufacturing licences
22. Nykaa, Dot & Key brand page, read 1 September 2026 — every Nykaa MRP and selling price cited above
23. Nykaa, Vitamin C + E Sunscreen 10 g, read 1 September 2026 — the ₹149 mini behind the per-gram figure
24. ASCI, Annual Complaints Report 2024-25 — personal-care totals with no individual advertiser named
25. ASCI, complaint outcomes, 2 September 2026 — five upheld influencer-disclosure complaints, April to July 2023