In 2017, Darpan Sanghvi launched MyGlamm with a simple but bold vision: to create a homegrown beauty brand that could stand tall against international giants. He saw India’s beauty market booming, but he also noticed that many young consumers wanted something more than just products on a shelf. They wanted stories, influencers they trusted, and relatable content that could guide them to the right choice.
Darpan combined beauty products with a digital ecosystem. Instead of relying only on traditional advertising, he turned to content and influencers. That approach eventually evolved into a much bigger idea—the content-to-commerce model. This model became the foundation of what would later be called the Good Glamm Group.
Building an Empire Through Acquisitions
The Good Glamm Group did not stop with MyGlamm. It began acquiring companies that could give it a stronghold across three pillars: brands, content, and creators.
The group bought beauty and personal care labels such as The Moms Co, St. Botanica, Organic Harvest, and Sirona. Each brand brought new categories and customer segments under the Good Glamm umbrella. At the same time, the group went after media platforms that could deliver audiences at scale. POPxo, ScoopWhoop, BabyChakra, and MissMalini joined the family, giving the group millions of readers and viewers every month.
To complete the circle, the group invested in creator and influencer networks. By doing this, Good Glamm controlled the entire funnel: content to attract users, influencers to build trust, and product brands to close the sale.
This integration of media, influencers, and commerce looked like a winning formula. Investors loved the story. Capital flowed in. By 2021, Good Glamm had raised hundreds of millions of dollars from big names such as Warburg Pincus and Prosus. The company reached unicorn status with a valuation of over a billion dollars.
The Numbers Tell the Story
Growth came fast. Revenues shot up year after year. From roughly ₹100 crore in FY21, the group grew several times bigger within two years. At its peak, the Good Glamm Group claimed to reach over 150 million monthly users across its media platforms and influencer networks. Its customer base grew at a blistering pace, adding millions of new buyers every year.
But growth carried a price. Losses mounted even faster than revenues. The group lost around ₹43 crore in FY21, ₹362 crore in FY22, and nearly ₹917 crore in FY23. Those numbers painted a worrying picture. For every rupee the group earned, it spent several more.
The company believed that scale would eventually make the model profitable. For a time, investors supported that vision. The market climate encouraged startups to chase growth first and worry about profits later. But when global funding slowed and the cost of capital rose, the strategy began to unravel.
Too Much, Too Fast
Darpan Sanghvi later admitted the truth himself: the group tried to do “too much, too fast, too big.”
Good Glamm had turned into a sprawling empire of brands, platforms, and influencer businesses. Managing such a diverse portfolio required deep integration and operational discipline. Instead, the company kept running each acquisition in silos. Teams struggled to align. Product development moved in different directions. Marketing spends kept ballooning.
While the acquisitions looked exciting on paper, the promised synergies never fully materialized. Media platforms struggled to convert readers into loyal buyers. Influencer campaigns ate up large budgets but delivered inconsistent returns. And the brands themselves needed constant investment to keep up with competition from both Indian startups and global heavyweights like L’Oréal and Unilever.
The Signs of Trouble
By 2023, cracks began to show. Vendors complained of delayed payments. Employees faced salary delays. The group had raised a lot of money, but the cash burn was out of control. With limited fresh funding available in the market, Good Glamm found itself running out of runway.
Despite efforts to restructure, the situation worsened in 2024 and 2025. The group had to sell off some of its prized acquisitions at steep discounts. Sirona went back to its original founders for a fraction of what Good Glamm had paid to acquire it. ScoopWhoop got sold to a marketing agency at a throwaway price compared to its earlier valuation. MissMalini, once a glamorous jewel in the portfolio, reportedly fetched only a few crores in the secondary sale.
The empire that Good Glamm had built through aggressive acquisitions began collapsing piece by piece. Lenders pushed for brand-wise asset sales to recover dues. What was once a celebrated unicorn started breaking up in public view.
A Founder’s Reflection
To his credit, Darpan Sanghvi did not shy away from admitting mistakes. He openly described Good Glamm’s downfall as a classic case of overexpansion. He called it the “momentum trap”—the tendency to keep moving faster without pausing to integrate or consolidate.
He also promised to take personal responsibility. Sanghvi pledged to contribute a quarter of his future post-tax income towards settling outstanding employee dues. For a founder, such an admission and gesture showed humility, but it also revealed the scale of the crisis the group faced.
Lessons for Startups
The Good Glamm story delivers several lessons that every entrepreneur should remember:
- Acquisitions require integration. Buying companies is easy, but aligning them into a single efficient machine is hard. Without integration, acquisitions create chaos rather than synergy.
- Revenue growth means little without profitability. Startups can survive losses for a while, but when those losses multiply faster than revenues, survival becomes uncertain.
- Focus beats diversification. Good Glamm tried to build a beauty empire, a media empire, and a creator network all at once. In the process, it lost focus on its core strength.
- Cash flow matters more than valuation. Investors may write big cheques during boom years, but when the tide turns, only companies with disciplined cash flow survive.
- Transparency builds trust. Employees and vendors suffered because of delayed payments. Honest communication could have softened the blow, but silence and uncertainty damaged morale further.
What Comes Next
As of 2025, the Good Glamm Group no longer exists as a single cohesive entity. Brands have moved to different owners. Employees have scattered. The dream of building a billion-dollar content-to-commerce ecosystem has ended, at least in this form.
But the story does not end with collapse. Darpan Sanghvi has already launched a new venture called CoFounder Circle, designed to mentor and support other founders. He wants to pass on the lessons he learned—both from his successes and from his failures. That pivot shows resilience. Failure does not define an entrepreneur; the ability to rise again does.
The Brighter Side of the Journey
It is important to recognize that Good Glamm also achieved remarkable feats before it stumbled. It showed Indian startups that bold visions can attract global investors and scale quickly. It created a new category by merging content, commerce, and creators in ways few companies had tried before. It gave Indian consumers access to diverse homegrown beauty and personal care brands.
In many ways, Good Glamm’s journey mirrors the evolution of India’s startup ecosystem itself—ambitious, fast-moving, experimental, and sometimes reckless.
Conclusion
The rise and fall of Good Glamm Group stands as one of the most dramatic startup stories in recent years. It highlights the thrill of building at scale, the temptations of chasing valuations, and the dangers of growing without discipline.
For future founders, this story serves as both an inspiration and a warning. Inspiration, because bold ideas can still attract capital and customers in India’s booming market. Warning, because unchecked ambition and poor execution can bring even the most celebrated startups to their knees.
The Good Glamm Group burned bright and fast. Its journey will remain etched in India’s startup history as a reminder that growth must always go hand in hand with focus, discipline, and sustainability.
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