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An engineer from DCE & MBA from XLRI jamshedpur i am currently creating a line of honest,…
Articles by Varun
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Goldilocks and other golden rules of motivation
Goldilocks and other golden rules of motivation
Motivation is the state of readiness to pursue a dedicated goal or a task. Its a word that you would find getting used…
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Positive Friction in Business
Positive Friction in Business
Friction as a concept is always associated with negative connotations. Even in science it almost always slows down and…
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5 benefits of Starting Up on the wrong side of your 30’s
5 benefits of Starting Up on the wrong side of your 30’s
All the big startup stories one gets to hear are of college drop outs who had already created empires by the time they…
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Varun Alagh reacted on thisVarun Alagh reacted on thisSome chapters are defined by what you achieve. Others by what you learn along the way. FY25–26 was a year of both for us. We took a hard look at our business, went back to the fundamentals, made some difficult choices and stayed focused on building a stronger Honasa for the long term. Today, we are seeing the impact of that work. ₹2,478.5 Cr in like-for-like revenue ₹230+ Cr EBITDA ₹200+ Cr Profit After Tax ₹100 Cr in Dividend But behind these numbers are thousands of people who showed up every day, teams that kept pushing forward, partners who continued to believe in us, and millions of consumers who gave our brands a place in their lives.That is what makes this journey meaningful for us. As we enter the next decade of Honasa, our ambition remains the same — to build brands that people trust, products that genuinely make a difference, and a company that creates lasting value for all those who are part of the journey. We have come a long way and we know the most exciting part is still ahead. Our latest Shareholder Letter captures where we are today, what we have learnt, and what we are building for tomorrow. Read it here: https://lnkd.in/dB6Kjkcg
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Varun Alagh shared thisThey say "slow and steady wins the race." I have come to believe the real version of that saying, at least in building consumer brands, is "steady and deliberate wins the race." Speed still matters. But it has to be the right kind of speed. I am happy to share that in Q1 FY27, we grew 31.8% YoY, with EBITDA almost doubling to ₹110 Cr and our highest ever PAT — ₹90 Cr. In the last 10 years, we have had the privilege of building two ₹1,000 Cr+ brands in India — Mamaearth and The Derma Co. That, to me, is more meaningful than just a milestone. It is evidence that a consumer-first approach, built patiently, can create brands that scale. Our Focus Categories grew 35%+, and that tells me something important — the momentum is coming from the core. The categories and brands I have spent years building, learning from, and investing behind. A few highlights I am particularly proud of: * Mamaearth accelerated to high-teens growth, with Rice Face Wash becoming our #1 face cleanser, while Rosemary became our second ₹100 Cr+ ARR hair ingredient, after Onion. * The Derma Co. entered the teens EBITDA club and the ₹1,000 Cr club, posting ₹1,000 Cr NSV ARR, while Face Cleansers crossed ₹200 Cr ARR — showing increasing depth across the portfolio. * Our younger brands grew 40%+, with continued traction across Gen Z innovation, premium serums, men's skincare, hair colour and sunscreen. * BTM Ventures crossed ₹150 Cr ARR and has grown 2X+ since acquisition, while expanding beyond its South India stronghold into Maharashtra, newer channels and categories. We entered the fragrance category with FIKN, India's first Elixir brand, tapping into a large and underpenetrated opportunity. What we have learned is that this is about getting many things right, repeatedly, and having the patience to let them compound. Staying close to the consumer. Strengthening the core. Making thoughtful bets. That is what Q1 FY27 gave me most — not just confidence in where we are today, but conviction in what Ghazal and I are building for the decades ahead. #HonasaQ1
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Varun Alagh shared thisWe believe far more in what we say than what we hear. The stories we tell ourselves hold more power over us than the ones we hear from others. And I think that's exactly why in therapy, they don't hand you the answer. They ask you what you want and how you plan to get there. A therapist could definitely tell you what's wrong and what to do about it in the first session, but the solution wouldn't stick because you didn't say it. You just heard it from them. It's a similar situation I see playing out with teams. For years I thought as a founder and the CEO, my job was to walk into a room with conviction and tell people what to do to show them where the gap was coming from. But over time, what I've witnessed running Honasa is that people don't commit to the plan I hand them. They commit to the plan they said out loud. The moment someone articulates their own goal and their own path to it, they make it part of their own belief system. So increasingly, my job isn't to have the answer ready. It's to ask the right questions that get someone to say it themselves. #Leadership
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Varun Alagh shared thisAt Honasa Consumer Ltd. there's one primary question we always ask before making a strategic decision, and that is, "Where is the consumer going next?" The answer, increasingly clearly, is inside-out. Search volumes for hair and skin nutraceuticals have grown 40%+ in just two years. Consumers are no longer asking just "what should I apply?" — they're asking "what should I take?" The science-backed supplement space is at an inflection point in India, and at Honasa, we don't like watching inflection points from the sidelines. Today I'm excited to announce that we're acquiring a majority stake in Fluence Pharma and launching Honasa Health as our dedicated nutraceuticals subsidiary. Here's why Fluence specifically: they've done the hardest part. Ten years of in-clinic evidence. A patented therapy — Cyclical Nutrition Therapy — that is the only one of its kind in both India and the US. A network of 3,000+ dermatologists who prescribe it. That's not a distribution story, that's a trust story. And trust in this category is everything. What Honasa brings to this partnership is our ability to take clinical solutions built for dermatologist clinics and scale them to millions of consumers through digital-first channels — the same playbook we've built across Mamaearth, The Derma Co., and our other brands. I want to welcome Amit Bhusari, Dr. Rajput and the #Fluence team to the Honasa family. And I'm incredibly excited to see what Dheeraj Nagpal builds with Honasa Health. The next chapter of Honasa is about a more complete answer to consumer needs. One that works from the outside and the inside. #HonasaHealth #Entrpreneurship
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Varun Alagh shared thisDoes this look like a sunglass store from any angle? Gentle Monster, a luxury eyewear and accessory brand, figured out one of the smartest forms of marketing. Build a store so bizarre that people cannot help but post about it. Giant kinetic sculptures, moving faces, insects hanging from ceilings, and futuristic landscapes. People walk in to buy sunglasses and walk out posting content. Gentle Monster employs 6 people to design its eyewear and 60 people to design its stores. That ratio tells you everything about where they place their bets. This was all by design. Hankook Kim, the founder, was running English language summer camps before he started GENTLE MONSTER in 2011. No fashion background. No luxury heritage. Just a belief that a store should be an immersive art experience first and a retail space second. It worked. The company grew from 209 billion won in revenue in 2020 to 789 billion won in 2024, with an operating profit margin of nearly 30 percent. Three things made this possible. * First, to become aspirational in #China, they had to become desirable outside China. They built credibility through Seoul, global collaborations, celebrity placements, and fashion circles before Chinese consumers started seeing them as a luxury label. In Asia, international recognition is social proof. Once a brand is seen as globally cool, domestic demand follows. * Second, their HAUS NOWHERE spaces in Seoul, Shanghai, and Shenzhen are not stores. They are narrative worlds. The Shenzhen store is among the most talked about experiences in the city. Not a place to just buy sunglasses. A place people travel to. * Third, they never tried to become a luxury lifestyle brand overnight. They owned eyewear so deeply that when they moved into fragrance and lifestyle through Tamburins, consumers trusted them. That trust comes from doing one thing exceptionally well for long enough that people stop questioning whether you belong. A lot of brands want to skip that part, but Gentle Monster did not. Thirteen years, one category, and a relentless belief that the experience is the brand. #LuxuryBrand #BrandBuilding #Entrepreneurship #Marketing
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Varun Alagh shared thisIndia Never Had a "Mass Luxury" Moment But It's Inventing One. The West had time. India doesn't. #Zara spent decades teaching a generation that style doesn't require a fortune. #Starbucks spent decades turning a $7 coffee into a daily ritual almost anyone could justify. Both had patient capital, predictable consumers, and the luxury of building through gradual waves of market evolution. We don't get that here. And that changes everything about how you have to build in India. India's e-commerce market is projected to go from $125 billion today to $345 billion by 2030. That's a dictionary definition of compression. Twenty years of consumer evolution happening in five, across categories, cities, and income brackets, all at once and without warning. The McKinsey frameworks were written for different curves. The Bain case studies assumed a different pace. By the time historical data becomes reliable here, the market has already moved. There is no clean playbook from another market you can lift and apply. You are building the playbook as you run on it. Here’s what this demands from founders: * Benchmark against the Indian consumer's next behaviour, not their last one. Trends show up in your data after the leading edge has already moved on. Intuition and proximity to the consumer matter more than ever. * Treat speed as a brand value, not an operational metric. Quick commerce is growing at 70–80% CAGR. The consumer doesn't separate how fast you deliver from how much they respect your brand. These are the same decisions now. * Design for Tier 2 and 3 first, not last. These cities now contribute over 50% of D2C revenue. If they're not your primary design constraint, you're already building for a shrinking base. * Accept that what you're building has no direct precedent. The brands that define this era won't look like Indian versions of Western brands. They will look like something new — shaped entirely by this consumer, this moment, and this pace of change. At Honasa Consumer Ltd., some days we feel close to cracking it. Some days the ground shifts again. But I'd rather be building in the middle of this than watching it from the sidelines. #BrandBuilding #D2C #Premium
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Varun Alagh shared thisLast quarter I said we're building Honasa like a flywheel, where initial rotations take everything you've got but eventually become self-sustaining. Q4 is that flywheel at fourth gear. ₹682 Cr in revenue. 28% YoY growth. EBITDA doubled. PAT more than doubled to ₹69 Cr. Three consecutive quarters of 20%+ growth. Every metric is at its highest ever. 📍 Mamaearth gaining share in key categories—Ubtan and Onion growing 2x faster than the brand, Rice Face Wash and Rosemary Shampoo scaling hard behind them. 📍 The Derma Co. at its strongest quarter ever with double-digit EBITDA. 📍 Younger brands up 40%+ in FY26. 📍 Reginald Men—₹100 Cr ARR in its very first quarter with us. 📍 Our first-ever dividend, approved by the board—₹3 per share. A statement, not a formality. This is what we came here to build, and we're nowhere near done. Keep watching for more. #Q4FY26 #Honasa
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Varun Alagh shared thisAt Honasa Consumer Ltd., across every brand, every team, we start every meeting with: Scientist ki tarah socho. "Keep judgments and egos out, and hypotheses and tests in.” It sounds simple, but it's actually one of the hardest cultural habits we've tried to build. Most of us were trained to plan before we act. Build the full picture; get the confidence; then move. And that instinct made sense in a slower world. The problem is the world moves faster than our plans now. By the time you've built the perfect case, the market has already shifted underneath you. So we made a rule. Every big move is a hypothesis first. Not a plan. Not a commitment. A hypothesis is something we believe might be true, that we're going to run the smallest possible test to prove or disprove before we go all in. This has been especially important as we've added new brands to the Honasa portfolio. Every time — Mamaearth, The Derma Co., Aqualogica™, BBLUNT, Dr. Sheth's ~ For Indian Skin — the temptation is to copy-paste what worked before. Same playbook, new logo. It's faster and feels safe. But each new brand has a different consumer, a different battlefield, a different purpose. What worked before is a starting hypothesis at best. Not a guarantee. The scientist mindset is really about one thing: replacing the comfort of judgment with the discipline of proof. It's the difference between "I think this will work" and "let me show you what the data actually says." And the interesting thing we've found is that thinking like a scientist doesn't slow you down. It makes you faster because you stop debating opinions in rooms and start running tests in the market. The argument ends when the evidence comes in. Not every hypothesis holds up. A lot of ours haven't. But we'd rather find that out in a controlled experiment than at full scale with full investment behind a wrong assumption. Plan less. Test more. Let the market tell you what's true. Think like a scientist. #Entrepreneurship #Mindset #D2C #BuildingaBrand
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Varun Alagh shared thisPremiumization is one of those words every founder and brand builder is throwing around right now. But I think the direction these discussions are going in is wrong. For a long time we assumed premium meant better quality, higher price point, fancier ingredients. And that foundation hasn't changed. It never will. A product that doesn't genuinely perform will get found out faster today than at any point in history — one bad review thread, one honest creator, one disappointed consumer with a larger following. Quality is still the entry ticket. But something else has also been layered on top of it. What's additionally driving premiumization in 2026 India is Instagram. People are spending more on things they can be seen using or experiencing. A water purifier sitting in your kitchen used to just need to work. Today it needs to look good enough that someone notices it in the background of your reel. A skincare routine used to be private. Today it's content. The flaunt factor has become a real purchase driver across categories that never had to think about it before. When everything is shareable, the way something makes you look becomes part of its value proposition. All of our brands under Honasa Consumer Ltd. are already adapting to this. #Beauty and #personalCare was always somewhat visible. But even here the bar has shifted. People want something that genuinely works on their skin and that they're proud to have on their shelf, proud to show in a video, proud to give as a gift. Desirability is now a feature. But it has to sit on top of a product that earns it. The question every brand needs to ask is not just "is my product flaunt-worthy?" — it's "does my product deserve to be flaunted?" If the answer to the second question is no, that's worth losing a lot of sleep over. #Premium #D2C #Brandbuilding
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Varun Alagh liked thisVarun Alagh liked thisCongratulations to the Honasa Consumer Ltd. team on winning the FMCG, Personal Care & Cosmetics category at the ET Martech+ Awards 2026. Across Mamaearth, Aqualogica™, The Derma Co., and BBLUNT India, the team moved away from one-size-fits-all broadcasts and built a retention engine tailored to how each brand's customers actually behave: - Replenishment reminders timed to real usage - Generative AI to keep creative fresh across brands and languages - Vernacular campaigns in Marathi and Telugu - Reward-based nudges to bring lapsed customers back. Honasa has been one of our most ambitious partners in building lifecycle marketing that reflects how a multi-brand portfolio really works. Congratulations, and thank you for building this with us. Shitij Venkat Raj Bhanu Sunil Pratik
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Varun Alagh liked thisVarun Alagh liked thisWould you buy a lip balm for the lip balm… or for the little kulhad keyring it comes with? 😄 I came across this Chaayos × Mamaearth Kulhad Chai Tinted Lip Balm and honestly, my marketer brain paused for a second. Because this isn’t just a lip balm. Chaayos is a brand that has always sold more than food. It sells that feeling of “chalo, chai pe milte hain.” The comfort of a kulhad. The conversations that somehow last longer than the chai. And that very Indian feeling of “ghar jaisa kuch.” Now add Mamaearth to the mix. A familiar beauty brand. A familiar chai brand. And suddenly, you have a product that sits right at the intersection of culture + utility + collectability. And then comes the smartest little detail… The kulhad-style keyring. ❤️ Because let’s be honest How many people will buy a lip balm because they desperately need another lip balm? But how many will pick it up because: “Wait… this comes with a tiny kulhad?!” 😂 That, to me, is the beauty of experiential marketing. You don’t always need to create a completely new category. Sometimes, you just need to take something ordinary, wrap it in a familiar emotion, and give people a reason to remember it. And suddenly, a small product has a story worth talking about. As a marketer, these are the collaborations I love spotting. Because the best brand moments often make you say: “I don’t need this… but I WANT this.” 😄 And that little shift from need to want? That’s where marketing gets interesting. Would you pick this up for the product, the aesthetics,or the tiny kulhad keyring?
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Varun Alagh liked thisVarun Alagh liked thisThis one is personal and hits close to home. 🥹✨ Less than a year ago, Luminéve was just a dream on paper. Fast forward to today: our Balanced Barrier Crème was named Best Moisturizer at the Grazia India Indie Beauty Superstars 2026! 🏆 To receive this kind of jury love as a brand under 12 months old competing alongside so many brilliant indie founders feels completely surreal. We set out to create uncompromising, barrier-first skincare that actually works. Seeing that vision validated so early on means everything. A huge thank you to the Grazia team, our fierce small team and everyone who took a chance on us from day one. We’re just getting started! #Lumineve #GraziaIndieBeautySuperstars2026 #BestMoisturizer #IndieBeauty Ghazal Alagh Varun Alagh Nirali Shah Ishita Ahuja Arshita Nagpal Jesna Raikwar Chirag Tuteja Kaustubh Sankhyadhar Harshita Agarwal Supreet Lamba
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Varun Alagh liked thisVarun Alagh liked thisVarun Alagh & Ghazal Alagh’s startup portfolio is bigger than you think Their investments span ecommerce, enterprise tech, fintech, healthtech, edtech and consumer services across a diverse set of startups From GoKwik and Xeno to Shiprocket, Pristyn Care, AlmaBetter and more, here’s a look at the companies that make up the Alaghs’ expanding portfolio. #Inc42 #trending #tech #D2C #GhazalAlagh #VarunAlagh
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Varun Alagh liked thisVarun Alagh liked thisOur 𝐁𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐫 𝐑𝐞𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫 𝐂𝐫è𝐦𝐞 has been recognised as 𝐁𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐌𝐨𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐳𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐆𝐫𝐚𝐳𝐢𝐚 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐞 𝐁𝐞𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐲 𝐒𝐮𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫 𝐀𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐬. When we built Lumineve, the goal was always to create skincare that brings together thoughtful formulation, clinical efficacy and a barrier-first approach.This recognition makes that journey even more special. A big thank you to everyone who has believed in the brand, the product and what we are building.🩵🏆 [Lumineve, Grazia India Award, award-winning skincare, best moisturizer, premium skincare, clinical skincare, skincare brand, skincare innovation, moisturizer, skin hydration, skincare excellence, beauty awards, Indian skincare brand, premium beauty, skincare innovation] #Lumineve #GraziaIndieBeauty #BestMoisturizer #AwardWinningSkincare #BarrierCare #Skincare Varun Alagh Ghazal Alagh Saahil Nayar Nirali Shah Arshita Nagpal Ishita Ahuja Nityaa Sharma Chirag Tuteja Shristhi Jain Jesna Raikwar Anshika Sharma
Experience & Education
Honors & Awards
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Business Unit President Award
President, Coca-Cola India and South West Asia
Awarded for being a lead member in MIT ICE project for turning around FBO business in 2015
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Above & Beyond Award
Leadrship Team, Coca-Cola India & Southwest Asia
Awarded for going beyond call of duty on a organization wide project
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Business Unit President Award
President, Coca-Cola India South West Asia
Awarded for leading excellent ideation & execution in Coca-Cola Zero launch in India
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I am Diageo Award
President, Diageo India
Awarded for excellent execution of the Smirnoff Nightlife Activation Nationally
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