House of Masaba Brand Audit: Aditya Birla-Owned, Made in India

House of Masaba is the label Masaba Gupta built on loud prints, and it now sells everything from a ₹2,000 gift card to gold neckpieces priced in lakhs. Its own shop carried 964 products on 11 September 2026, at a median price of ₹42,000.

It is often assumed that Nykaa owns the label. Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail’s audited annual report shows a different owner.

Founder

Masaba Gupta, who founded the label at 19

Brand age

ABFRL’s FY2025-26 report describes the label as 16 years old; no filing read here gives a founding date

Operating company

House of Masaba Lifestyle Private Limited, CIN U74110MH2014PTC257909, incorporated 9 September 2014

Headquarters

Marol, Andheri East, Mumbai

Current owner

Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Limited, 61.81% at 31 March 2026; a subsidiary since 1 June 2022

Category

Womenswear, menswear and fine jewellery, plus the Lovechild beauty line

Price band on its own shop

₹2,000 to ₹48,93,750; median ₹42,000, read 11 September 2026

Available in India

Own stores and houseofmasaba.com; no listings on Myntra or Nykaa Fashion on 11 September 2026

Who owns House of Masaba

The majority holder is Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Limited, listed on the BSE and the NSE. Its Integrated Annual Report for FY 2025-26 carries an ownership table naming House of Masaba Lifestyle Private Limited as a subsidiary, with the holding company’s ownership interest and voting power at 61.81%, against 54.05% a year earlier. The figure appears three times in that report and agrees each time.

Every step there comes from ABFRL’s own filings.

ABFRL’s documents give two figures for that stake. The exchange filing of 14 January 2022 says the board approved acquiring a 51% stake, for about ₹90 crore including secondary and primary money, subject to true-up adjustments; the annual report gives ABFRL’s holding as 52.44% at 31 March 2023. The first is the stake approved, the second a holding at a later date.

The exit that is already written down

ABFRL’s FY2025-26 accounts describe a simultaneous call and put option over the rest of the company. ABFRL holds the calls and has written the puts, so between five and fifteen years after the acquisition — from June 2027 through to 2037, in specified windows — it can buy, and must buy if the promoter asks it to, enough shares to reach 100%. The price is the fair value of the investment on the date of exercise.

The remaining 38.19% of the company was held outside ABFRL at 31 March 2026, including by a promoter, according to that note. ABFRL does not break that 38.19% down by holder.

A register mirror read on 11 September 2026 lists the designer and Ashish Dikshit, ABFRL’s managing director, among the company’s directors. It is a different arrangement from Ritu Kumar, where Reliance Retail Ventures holds the majority outright, and different again from Anita Dongre, still held by the founder’s family.

Nykaa never owned this label

The Nykaa story is real, but it is a licensing story. FSN E-Commerce Ventures Limited — Nykaa’s listed parent — defines in its IPO prospectus a “Masaba Trademark License Agreement” between House of Masaba Lifestyle Private Limited and FSN, dated 25 March 2019, and lists it among its material contracts. In the business section, FSN says that in 2019, under a trademark licence, it collaborated with Masaba Gupta to launch Masaba by Nykaa, a beauty range covering lips, nails and fragrances.

The direction of travel is the opposite of the popular version: House of Masaba licensed its name to Nykaa, and Nykaa did not buy House of Masaba. The same prospectus separately lists the label among third-party brands selling on the Nykaa platform, which is a stocking relationship and nothing more.

Masaba by Nykaa and Lovechild by Masaba are two different things. The first is Nykaa’s 2019 range under a licence. The second is the company’s own beauty line, which ABFRL dates to 2022 — lovechild.in’s terms page states that the site is owned by House of Masaba Lifestyle Pvt Ltd. Four years and two different owners separate them.

The numbers a listed parent has to publish

Almost no Indian designer label publishes what it earns. This one’s figures are public for one reason: a listed company owns it, and every listed Indian parent files a statement of subsidiaries giving turnover and profit for each one.

ABFRL statements of subsidiaries, FY2022-23 to FY2025-26. The first year is a part year.

Turnover and the loss after tax have both risen. The loss after tax was about 24% of turnover in the first part year and about 38% of it in FY2025-26; across the four years the business turned over ₹368.18 crore and lost ₹121.14 crore.

ABFRL’s filings record its funding. During FY2025-26 it put in ₹65.00 crore by rights issue, after ₹17.09 crore the year before, and records a commitment to support the funding of the company’s operations. A separate note gives net assets of ₹27.00 crore and a share of consolidated loss of ₹50.56 crore, agreeing with the subsidiary statement to the paisa. ABFRL also discloses a term loan from ICICI Bank secured on House of Masaba’s assets.

For a shopper, the filings show a growing business that, as at FY2025-26, was loss-making and funded by its listed parent.

What House of Masaba costs in India

The brand’s own shop was read in full on 11 September 2026: 964 products across 6,116 variants. The lowest price was ₹2,000 and the median ₹42,000, spread across 252 distinct prices. Of the 964, 296 carried a comparison price and charged 59.8% of it; the other two-thirds carried none. That crossed-out number is the shop’s own comparison price, not a declared MRP, and the two are not the same claim.

houseofmasaba.com, read 11 September 2026. First variant price per product.

The most expensive garment is a lehenga at ₹7,95,000, with two more at ₹6,95,000. The largest product groups are kurta sets, sarees and lehenga sets, so the catalogue’s centre of gravity is occasion wear rather than the printed everyday pieces the label first became known for.

None of this price is import duty. The garment pages declare India as the country of origin and name the company itself as manufacturer, so nothing lands here with customs on top. This is an Indian brand’s own pricing, at a median of ₹42,000 against a ₹2,624 median for Manyavar on Myntra the same day — different markets rather than competitors, and read on different channels.

The gold, and what the page actually says about it

The most expensive item in the catalogue on 11 September 2026 was not clothing. It was the Pearl Dinner Neckpiece at ₹48,93,750 — forty-eight lakh, ninety-three thousand, seven hundred and fifty rupees — listed under fine jewellery, with both a price and a “Price on Request” label shown on the page.

Its published specification block is detailed: gold, 18kt, metal weight 81.036g, gross weight 369.9g, diamond carat weight 4.075ct, clarity VS, and a list of the stones from full-cut diamonds to baroque pearls. The certification field reads “Certification – Brand Certified”.

Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail held 61.81% of House of Masaba Lifestyle at 31 March 2026, according to its audited annual report.

Neither jewellery page read that day — this one or the ₹32,12,500 Countryside Earrings — shows hallmark or HUID details or a named stone-grading laboratory. A hallmark is stamped on the article itself, which a product page would not show. Before paying for gold at this level, ask to see the hallmark and its identification number on the piece, and a separate stone report for the diamonds.

What the clothing pages publish, and what they leave out

Twenty non-jewellery product pages were read in full on 11 September 2026. All twenty named the fabric, declared the country of origin, and named a manufacturer and packer — the company itself, at its Andheri address. That is a better record than many Indian labels manage on their own sites, and it deserves saying plainly.

The twenty pages did not give a fibre-content percentage, a GSM figure — the fabric weight that tells you how substantial a cloth is — or a textile certification, and they did not name a mill, weaver, workshop or embroidery unit.

The ₹7,95,000 lehenga is the clearest example. Its page names the cloth by trade description — heavy raw silk for the lehenga and blouse, silk organza for the dupatta, tulle for the veil — and describes patchwork panels with zardozi and dabka embroidery, then gives origin India and the manufacturer line. The page gives no fibre percentage for those fabrics.

That still leaves House of Masaba at the clean end of the line that matters most in Indian clothing: who is answerable for the garment. It sets its own price, sells through its own stores and site, and puts its own name on the declaration on every page read. For how a marketplace’s own label handles the same declaration, see our Roadster audit.

Lovechild, and what is claimed for it

Lovechild by Masaba belongs to the same company, so its revenue is already inside the ₹133.60 crore above. Its own shop carried 413 products on 11 September 2026, from ₹199 to ₹3,169 at a median of ₹929, with 383 of the 413 carrying a comparison price and charging 82.7% of it.

A handful of the product descriptions, read the same day, use words such as vegan, cruelty-free or SPF. The descriptions do not name a test method or certifying body for those claims; a buyer who wants those details can ask the brand.

Where you can actually buy it

The clothing brand is not on the marketplaces. A search for House of Masaba on Myntra on 11 September 2026 found no listings, and Nykaa Fashion showed no brand result either.

The beauty line is the opposite. Lovechild Masaba carried 95 listings on Myntra and 73 products on Nykaa’s brand page the same day, and a shop-in-shop kiosk opened at Shoppers Stop in R City Mall, Ghatkopar in April 2024. ABFRL’s annual report gives two store counts, which measure different things.

The 24 is a brand-narrative figure and the 20 counts company-owned, company-operated stores at year end, so they are different measures. The locator’s 20 addresses run from Mumbai and Delhi to Ludhiana, Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Kolkata and Raipur. Two years earlier the narrative figure was 17.

Who House of Masaba is actually for

This is occasion wear at a designer price: a median of ₹42,000, lehengas into the lakhs, and jewellery starting at ₹85,000. It fits the shopper buying for a wedding or a festive season, who wants a print nobody else in the room is wearing.

It fits less well if you buy clothes on specification. No page read carries a fibre percentage, a fabric weight or a named workshop, so there is nothing to set against another label’s silk at the same price. The mass ethnic-wear shelf where Biba sits publishes little more, but asks a fraction of the money.

The entry point is real, though: womenswear starts at ₹4,800, menswear at ₹6,000 and the beauty line at ₹199 — the doors in for the design signature without the occasion-wear bill.

Common questions

How we research and verify brand audits: our methodology.

References

1. Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail, Integrated Annual Report FY 2025-26 — the 61.81% and 54.05% holdings, the FY2025-26 turnover and loss, the put and call option, the ₹65.00 crore and ₹17.09 crore rights issues, net assets of ₹27.00 crore, the ICICI Bank term loan, the 24-store and 20-store figures
2. ABFRL exchange filing, 14 January 2022 — board approval of a 51% stake for about ₹90 crore including secondary and primary money
3. ABFRL, Integrated Annual Report FY 2024-25 — the 54.05% holding, FY2024-25 turnover of ₹114.79 crore and loss of ₹35.97 crore, and the 1 June 2022 acquisition date
4. ABFRL, Annual Report 2023-24 — FY2023-24 turnover of ₹69.58 crore, loss of ₹22.69 crore, the 52.44% holding and the earlier 17-store figure
5. ABFRL, Annual Report 2022-23 — the part-year turnover of ₹50.21 crore and loss of ₹11.92 crore
6. FSN E-Commerce Ventures Limited, IPO prospectus — the Masaba Trademark License Agreement dated 25 March 2019, the launch of Masaba by Nykaa in 2019, and House of Masaba listed among third-party brands on the platform
7. Zauba Corp, a mirror of the company register, read 11 September 2026 — the CIN, the 9 September 2014 incorporation, the registered office and the six directors
8. houseofmasaba.com, read 11 September 2026 — 964 products, the ₹2,000 minimum, the ₹42,000 median, 252 distinct prices, and 296 products carrying a comparison price at 59.8%
9. Pearl Dinner Neckpiece product page, read 11 September 2026 — the ₹48,93,750 price, the “Price on Request” label, 18kt purity, the weights and stones, and the “Certification – Brand Certified” line
10. Countryside Earrings product page, read 11 September 2026 — the ₹32,12,500 price and the same certification line
11. Khubani Ka Meetha lehenga product page, read 11 September 2026 — the ₹7,95,000 price, the fabric line, the zardozi and dabka description, and the origin and manufacturer declaration
12. House of Masaba store locator, read 11 September 2026 — 20 distinct addresses
13. Lovechild terms and conditions, read 11 September 2026 — “Lovechild.in is owned by House of Masaba Lifestyle Pvt Ltd”
14. lovechild.in, read 11 September 2026 — 413 products, prices from ₹199 to ₹3,169, 383 comparison prices at 82.7%, and the product descriptions
15. Nykaa, LoveChild Masaba brand page, read 11 September 2026 — 73 products listed
16. Indian Retailer, 17 April 2024 — the Shoppers Stop kiosk at R City Mall, Ghatkopar and the products on Shoppers Stop Beauty