Kay Beauty Brand Audit: Nykaa Subsidiary, Contract Makers

Kay Beauty is the colour-cosmetics brand co-created by Nykaa with Katrina Kaif. The company behind it is Nykaa-KK Beauty Private Limited, a Mumbai firm majority-held and consolidated by Nykaa’s listed parent, registered at the same Lower Parel address as FSN E-Commerce Ventures itself. Four manufacturer names appear on the product pages we read, one of them in Germany. This audit sets out who owns it, who makes it and what it costs.

Snapshot

Launched

October 2019, on Nykaa; the joint-venture company was incorporated 13 July 2018

Legal entity

Nykaa-KK Beauty Private Limited, Mumbai — a subsidiary of FSN E-Commerce Ventures, Nykaa’s listed parent

Shareholding

Nykaa 50.99%, Katrina Kaif 41.5%, Matrix India 7.5% — per RoC filings, as reported in March 2026

Who makes it

Mostly contract makers on the pages we read: Intercos and Maxima in Uttarakhand, Schwan Cosmetics in Germany; one Nykaa page names the joint venture itself

Core line, selling price

₹263 to ₹1,572, checked 2 September 2026

Scale

₹132.39 crore FY25 revenue filed; ₹380 crore FY26 gross merchandise value — two different numbers

How it started

Nykaa-KK Beauty Private Limited was incorporated in Mumbai on 13 July 2018, fifteen months before the brand appeared. The launch came in October 2019, with Kaif calling it “my first ever Beauty Brand” and Nykaa described as the platform. Nykaa’s own annual report puts it more precisely: “co-created with celebrity Katrina Kaif”.

The joint venture is listed among FSN E-Commerce Ventures’ subsidiaries in Nykaa’s own IPO prospectus, and corporate registry records carry it as an FSN subsidiary today. Its registered office is 104 Vasan Udyog Bhavan, Lower Parel — the same address as FSN itself.

Shareholding as reported by Startuppedia, 1 March 2026, attributing RoC filings; subsidiary status per FSN’s prospectus and registry records.

Matrix India Entertainment Consultants, the third shareholder, is a registered Mumbai company classified under programme production.

The business is profitable on the reported figures. Revenue rose 50% to ₹132.39 crore in FY25 with ₹11 crore of net profit, per RoC-attributed reporting, after a third straight profitable year through FY24. The same reporting records expenses up 60%, so profit stayed broadly flat while sales rose. Trade coverage reported 82°E, another celebrity-fronted label, at ₹15.2 crore of FY25 revenue.

What they actually make

The catalogue is colour cosmetics — face, lips, eyes and nails, plus a small skin line and a designer collaboration. The hero franchises are the Matte Drama and Hydra Crème lipsticks, the kajals and the HD Liquid Concealer. Nykaa’s annual report calls Hydra Crème the “#1 lipstick range on the platform” — a rank measured on Nykaa’s own platform.

No factory owned by the joint venture appears on the pages we read. Across six declaration reads on five products and the brand’s two official sites, four different makers appear. Contrast our Campus audit, where the brand runs its own factories and says so on the box.

The first two rows differ. On 2 September 2026, the Matte Drama lipstick page on nykaa.com gave the joint venture’s Lower Parel address in the manufacturer field, and the page on kaybeauty.com gave Intercos India, Dehradun. We report the two entries as printed; the declaration on the pack is the one to read.

For who made a Kay Beauty product, the declaration printed on the pack is the record to read.

The makers themselves are serious operations. Intercos, which appears on three of the six reads, is a Euronext-listed Italian contract manufacturer that describes over 550 clients across the global beauty industry. Schwan Cosmetics, which makes the KohlStar kajal in Heroldsberg, Germany, is the Schwan-STABILO pencil group that supplies cosmetics companies worldwide. So the line “Kay Beauty products are made in India” is mostly true and the hero kajal is the exception — its page states country of origin Germany. Six reads on five products is our sample; the rest of the catalogue may differ.

The KohlStar page claims “24 Hour Stay” and “100% Waterproof & Smudge proof”; the page does not cite a wear test, laboratory or measured figure for those claims. Hydra Crème is described as “Intensely Hydrating” alongside ingredient call-outs, and Matte Drama as “Non-Drying” “for all day wear”, with no hours figure published. “Dermatologically tested” did not appear on the pages we sampled.

Every page we read carries a “Cruelty Free” badge; the badge does not name a certifier. PETA’s Beauty Without Bunnies entry for Nykaa, read 2 September 2026, covers “only NYKAA brands” and names eight of them; Kay Beauty is not among them. Whether another certifier lists the brand, we did not establish.

What Kay Beauty costs in India

Every price below was read on 2 September 2026, across seventeen price lines on the brand’s own site and nykaa.com. Fifteen of the seventeen sold 12–30% below MRP, and the brand’s site advertised a further 15% sitewide code that day. Treat the MRP as a reference price — the same conclusion our Sparx and Liberty audits reached about footwear stickers.

Per gram, the picture changes. The lipsticks run ₹238 to ₹305 a gram at MRP. The KohlStar kajal packs 0.35 g, so its friendly ₹299 tag is ₹854 a gram, while the brand’s own 1.2 g gel kajal is ₹496 a gram at MRP. Same brand, same job, and the small pack costs 72% more per gram.

KohlStar kajal, 0.35 g

₹299 MRP — ₹854 a gram

Ink Artist gel kajal, 1.2 g

₹595 MRP — ₹496 a gram

Small-pack premium

+72% per gram

Checked on

2 September 2026

There is a family comparison too. The house label of the same parent sells its Magic Kajal at ₹663 a gram at MRP — about ₹430 as sold — so the celebrity venture’s German pencil costs roughly 29% more per gram at sticker than its sibling’s. Across pack sizes, the per-gram figure is the fairer comparison.

Who Kay Beauty is actually for

The price tier is mid-range. The heroes — lipsticks at ₹749 to ₹1,099, the concealer at ₹849, the lip-and-cheek blur at ₹1,099 — sold between ₹500 and ₹1,500 on 2 September 2026, with only the small kajals below that band. That places it a full tier above the same parent’s house label, whose heroes sell under ₹250; the premium buys shade ranges, Intercos and Schwan formulation, and the name on the campaign.

It suits the buyer who wants Bollywood-fronted colour cosmetics, regular discounts and formulation by contract manufacturers that supply the global industry. It suits less well the buyer who wants published wear-test results or a named cruelty-free certifier before buying.

Reputation and the advertising record

The advertising record carries two decided outcomes. The Advertising Standards Council of India upheld a complaint on 8 March 2022 against a “mynykaa – Kay Beauty By Katrina” Instagram ad, and upheld another on 19 June 2025 over an influencer’s Instagram post for Hydra Crème lipsticks. Both were disclosure matters under ASCI’s influencer guidelines — advertisements not adequately labelled as advertisements — not findings that any product claim was false. In both, the advertiser named was Nykaa E-Retail, the parent’s retail arm, not the joint venture.

What those outcomes do and do not settle is worth stating plainly. ASCI is the advertising industry’s own self-regulatory body rather than a statutory regulator, and each decision was about a single post in the form it carried when it was examined. Neither sets a standing rule about how this brand may advertise, and nothing on the record is a finding about the pages and posts Kay Beauty runs today.

The brand’s size is published on two bases. The company’s FY25 revenue was ₹132.39 crore, per RoC-attributed reporting. Nykaa’s disclosed figures — ₹240 crore for FY25 in its annual report and ₹380 crore for FY26 in its investor deck — are gross merchandise value, the value of goods sold before discounts and returns, and are not revenue.

Registrar of Companies figures via RoC-attributed reporting; GMV per FSN’s annual report and Q4 FY26 investor presentation.

Nykaa’s annual report also calls this “India’s largest celebrity beauty brand”. No metric or comparison set is published with that line; it is the parent’s own description. The difference between a famous brand name and the company on the register is one our Bata audit walks through for footwear, where the global name and the Indian listed company are different things too.

Buying it in India

Kay Beauty is not Nykaa-exclusive. It sells on Nykaa online and in Nykaa stores — where the seller on every page we read is Nykaa E Retail — on its own site kaybeauty.com, in the Gulf under Nykaa’s Nysaa venture, and through Space NK, which Nykaa’s deck calls the first Indian-founded beauty brand in that retailer’s portfolio. Whether it sells on Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra or Tira we could not establish, so buy from the channels the brand itself names.

Common questions

How we research and verify brand audits: our methodology.

References

1. ZaubaCorp, Nykaa-KK Beauty Private Limited, read 2 September 2026 — incorporation on 13 July 2018 and the Lower Parel registered office
2. TheCompanyCheck, Nykaa-KK Beauty Private Limited, read 2 September 2026 — subsidiary of FSN E-Commerce Ventures and FY25 revenue of ₹132.39 crore
3. FSN E-Commerce Ventures, Prospectus, 2021 — Nykaa–KK Beauty listed among FSN’s subsidiaries
4. Startuppedia, 1 March 2026 — the RoC-attributed shareholding split of 50.99 / 41.5 / 7.5, and FY24–FY25 revenue, profit and expense figures
5. ZaubaCorp, Matrix India Entertainment Consultants, read 2 September 2026 — the third shareholder’s registration and entertainment classification
6. Gulf News, 16 October 2019 — the October 2019 launch and Kaif’s “my first ever Beauty Brand” framing
7. FSN E-Commerce Ventures, Integrated Annual Report 2024-25 — “co-created with celebrity Katrina Kaif”, “India’s largest celebrity beauty brand”, FY25 GMV of ₹240 crore, the platform-qualified lipstick rank and the Gulf expansion under Nysaa
8. Nykaa, Investor Presentation Q4 FY26, May 2026 — FY26 GMV of ₹380 crore and the Space NK line
9. Storyboard18, read 2 September 2026 — the profitability streak through FY24 and the celebrity-brand comparison figures
10. Nykaa, Kay Beauty Matte Drama Lipstick, read 2 September 2026 — the joint venture’s Lower Parel address shown as manufacturer, and the ₹799 price
11. Kay Beauty, Matte Drama Lipstick page, read 2 September 2026 — Intercos India, Dehradun shown as manufacturer for the same product, and the ₹749 price
12. Nykaa, Kay Beauty Matte Liquid Lipstick, read 2 September 2026 — the Maxima Solutions, Pantnagar declaration
13. Kay Beauty, KohlStar 24 Hour Kajal page, read 2 September 2026 — Schwan Cosmetics Germany as manufacturer, country of origin Germany, 0.35 g at ₹299, and the 24-hour and 100% waterproof claims
14. Kay Beauty, Hydra Crème Lipstick page, read 2 September 2026 — the Intercos declaration, the hydration claims and the ₹749–849 selling range
15. Kay Beauty, eyes collection, read 2 September 2026 — gel kajal, palette, mascara, pencil and liner prices in the table above
16. Intercos Group, read 2 September 2026 — the contract manufacturer’s own profile; listed on Euronext Milan in November 2021
17. Schwan-STABILO Group, read 2 September 2026 — the cosmetics-pencil manufacturer behind the KohlStar kajal
18. PETA Beauty Without Bunnies, NYKAA entry, read 2 September 2026 — “only NYKAA brands”, eight brands named, Kay Beauty absent
19. ASCI complaint outcomes, searched 2 September 2026 — the upheld rulings of 8 March 2022 and 19 June 2025, both under the influencer guidelines, advertiser Nykaa E-Retail
20. Indian Kanoon, searched 2 September 2026 — no judgment naming Nykaa-KK Beauty