Purpose-led storytelling & smarter digital strategies shaped beauty marketing in 2025

India’s beauty and wellness industry reached a new high in 2025, emerging as the fastest-growing beauty and personal care market globally. Valued at $31.2 billion, with revenues projected at $32.5 billion, the year was defined not just by growth but by a shift in how beauty brands built relevance.

Global players accelerated their India entry. Fenty Beauty and Fenty Skin launched nationwide through Reliance Retail, while Armani Beauty opened a flagship store in Mumbai and Chantecaille entered via Nykaa, signalling rising demand for premium and experiential beauty.

Digital discovery moved firmly to the centre. Beauty e-commerce recorded 39% value growth, far outpacing physical retail. On Myntra, beauty grew nearly twice as fast as the broader online category and now contributes one in five orders. Gen Z accounts for around 60% of beauty users, while Tier-2 and Tier-3 markets are growing almost 50% faster than metros.

For brands, this meant 2025 became less about chasing momentary buzz and more about recalibrating marketing playbooks to match a consumer who is younger, more informed, and increasingly values authenticity over aspiration alone.

For Renee Cosmetics, the biggest marketing shift of 2025 was responding to a more conscious consumer. Ashutosh Valani, Co-Founder, says, “Consumers became far more ingredient-aware and authenticity-driven, so we shifted our focus toward value-aligned influencer partnerships and transparent storytelling.” He adds that strengthening Renee’s offline footprint across cities was equally important to “stay closer to the consumer.”

At MARS, the narrative was similar, pivoting away from episodic campaigns toward systematic influence. Anmol Sahai Mathur, Vice President of Marketing, MARS Cosmetics, says, “2025 marked the point where we invested in influence systems that can repeatedly influence customers, rather than investing in large-scale campaigns.” The emphasis, he says, was on consistency and building trust as a core differentiator.

Vidushi Goyal, Chief Marketing Officer at Swiss Beauty, notes that 2025 marked a clear pivot in how the brand allocated its marketing spends. “The biggest shift in our marketing investment was a sharper focus on digital-first brand storytelling and social-led amplification, particularly through high-impact campaigns and creator collaborations,” she says.

This translated into a conscious prioritisation of platforms where younger beauty consumers are most active and vocal, especially short-form video and social media. Goyal adds that campaigns like We Got You, Girl!  IPL-led Har Bride Ka Beauty Stroke campaign reflects this shift. “ Instead of relying on traditional, one-way advertising, we focused on building relevance through relatable, culturally resonant narratives that audiences could engage with and share.”

For PAC, the shift was less about channels and more about purpose. Founder and Director Bonish Jain says the brand moved “from being largely product-led to investing more deeply in brand-led marketing,” accepting that this might not always deliver immediate conversions but believing it builds “a stronger, more enduring brand.”

How marketing budgets moved

In 2025, beauty brands maintained a balanced approach to marketing spends, spreading investments across multiple levers to stay visible while driving results. 

Bonish Jain says, “Our marketing spends were fairly balanced across brand awareness, revenue generation, campaign building, and influencer marketing, allowing us to stay visible while driving measurable business outcomes.”

Swiss Beauty followed a similar multi-pronged strategy. Vidushi Goyal says, “At a broad level, our 2025 spending was split across digital media and performance marketing, offline and trade marketing, and brand storytelling initiatives.” She pointed out that a significant part of their investment went into always-on digital media and e-commerce support, while offline retail visibility and trade marketing remained a key focus.

Digital-led investments were also central to Renee’s 2025 strategy. Ashutosh Valani said, “In 2025, digital led our spends, supported by growing investments in retail media and in-store visibility.”

Looking ahead to 2026, brands are shifting from broad visibility to strategic, relationship-driven spending. PAC plans to focus on “a more reliability-led and organic approach, with greater emphasis on founder-led marketing and community trust-building,” while also increasing on-ground experiences aimed at Gen Z.

Goyal says Swiss Beauty expects “higher investments in digital, content, and commerce-linked marketing, while continuing to back offline visibility as distribution expands.” And Renee intends to deepen the online-offline connection through collaborations, keeping digital at the core but making physical touchpoints more meaningful.

Challenges faced 

If growth defined the beauty category in 2025, complexity defined the marketing challenge. Across brands, the common friction point was relevance, how to break through rising clutter, fragmented attention, and a consumer increasingly resistant to traditional campaign playbooks.

At Renee Cosmetics, the challenge stemmed from a rapidly evolving consumer mindset. “Consumers were changing faster than ever,” says Ashutosh Valani, adding that this forced the brand to become more agile and sharpen its understanding of consumer behaviour. Campaign planning, he notes, became more responsive and data-led, with a stronger emphasis on relevance across platforms rather than static, pre-planned bursts.

This sense of fatigue was even more pronounced at MARS. Anmol Sahai Mathur points to a noticeable slowdown in consumer interest, driven by overexposure to brands, content, and offers. “Consumers were responding less to what might be called ‘big bang’ marketing,” he explains. 

The response was a shift toward shorter, more flexible planning cycles and experimentation grounded in real-time feedback. Creativity, Mathur adds, was no longer evaluated against ideal scenarios, but constantly tested against market reality.

For Swiss Beauty, the challenge lay in navigating an increasingly fragmented attention economy while maintaining consistency. Goyal says reaching the right audience with the right message has become more complex as expectations from brands continue to rise.

“This prompted us to be more thoughtful about how we plan and execute campaigns. We focused on sharper prioritisation, clearer messaging, and better integration across channels rather than relying on isolated campaign bursts. There was a stronger emphasis on sustained presence and efficiency,” she says, ensuring every initiative served a defined objective.

At PAC, the pressure point was a clutter of a different kind, too many launches, too many creators, and shrinking attention spans. 

Jain says, “This pushed us to simplify our approach. Instead of spreading ourselves thin across multiple messages, we became far more selective, focusing on fewer, stronger narratives and ensuring they were reinforced across platforms. It changed the way we planned campaigns, prioritising clarity and repetition over constant novelty.” 

What 2026 will demand from beauty marketers

If 2025 was about reaching more consumers across more platforms, beauty marketers agree that 2026 will be about making those connections count. As the category becomes noisier and more performance-led, brands are beginning to reassess what sustainable growth really looks like. 

For Renee Cosmetics, this means rethinking how the brand shows up in consumers’ lives. Valani says, “Our focus for 2026 is to move from reach to relevance. We see trust-led storytelling, personalisation, community-driven content, and seamless online-to-offline journeys shaping the next phase of brand building in beauty.” 

A similar shift is visible at Mars, where the focus is moving inward after years of heavy investment across digital and performance channels. In 2025, the company split its spends evenly, with strong mid-funnel activity, scaled creator partnerships, and brand-led launch moments. Looking ahead, Mars plans to prioritise its owned ecosystems. 

Mathur says, “In 2026, we'll want to focus more on our Owned Ecosystems, such as CRMs, communities, and repeat purchases, with a greater emphasis on prioritising quality partnerships with creators and working to connect our worlds of media, commerce, and content more intricately. Efficiency and quality of growth, rather than just growth, will fuel our scaling.” 

At Swiss Beauty, the road to 2026 is about sharpening brand clarity while keeping pace with fast-changing discovery habits. Goyal says, “As Swiss Beauty continues to scale across categories and channels, our focus will be on creating clarity and consistency in our brand story across touchpoints from digital platforms to offline retail.” 

The company expects content-led discovery, driven by short-form video, creators, and quick commerce, to play an even bigger role in how consumers find and buy beauty products. At the same time, Goyal believes offline retail will continue to be critical, especially in tier II and III markets, where visibility and access still drive scale.

She adds, “Overall, 2026 will be about striking the right balance between investing in digital innovation and content while ensuring that our offline presence and brand fundamentals remain strong, efficient, and relevant to a younger, value-conscious consumer.” 

This renewed emphasis on depth over scale also extends to how brands are thinking about physical presence. For PAC, 2026 is firmly about showing up on the ground, not just on screens. 
Jain says, “Our biggest marketing resolution for 2026 is to build a stronger on-ground presence by being part of more events and experiences where consumers and our community can interact with the brand first-hand.” 

PAC sees a clear shift in beauty discovery towards touch-and-feel interactions, where consumers want to try products, learn through demos, and spend time with the brand before making a purchase.

Jain adds, “Blending these physical experiences with digital storytelling will be key, as brands move towards deeper, more meaningful consumer relationships rather than purely transactional interactions.”

By the end of 2025, beauty marketing in India had clearly shifted from scale to substance, where long-term trust, cultural relevance, and meaningful consumer relationships mattered more than momentary visibility.