Amazon joins MyGlamm, UrbanClap in beauty-at-home space

After successfully launching the home services marketplace in the United States, e-commerce major is set to go big with the similar format in India and has begun with the beauty services industry. Amazon has launched its beauty-at-home marketplace in Bangalore.

In its initial phase, the e-commerce leader is offering these services at select 15 locations in Bangalore. The services being offered include threading, waxing, manicure and pedicure. It will cater to women customers in these locations from 9 am to 6 pm every day. “The best quality professional beauticians have been hand-picked by third party service providers, through rigorous quality checks, background verification and training, to deliver high quality service,” quotes the Amazon India website.

While Amazon is accepting only online payments for now, it says that it will introduce the cash on delivery option in due course of time. It is also offering 50 per cent discount on each service as the pilot offer.

The market

India’s beauty services market is worth over $ 5 billion, registering a 20-25 per cent growth year-on-year. As the consumer becomes busier and lacks the time and energy to go to a salon, at-home services have become a hit in the past couple of years.

Many players have entered and grown in this space and have even started taking the franchising route to expansion in different cities for a countrywide reach. MyGlamm and UrbanClap are the leaders in this space. Other players like VanityCube, Vyomo etc are also making the most of the huge opportunity potential of the beauty-at-home sector.

“While setting up Sanghvi Brands (my offline business), we saw this need, consumers coming into my salons and telling my stylists- can you guys come home on your off day? We saw this need very clearly, so we thought to address this need and enable this behaviour by creating this app which allows the customer to approach artists like beauticians, hair stylists, nail technicians and make-up artists to reach consumer’s doorstep,” says MyGlamm Founder and CEO Darpan Sanghvi.

Beauty-at-home start-ups have also been getting a lot of investor attention since the past one year. Salon leader Naturals infused Rs 100 crore into Vyomo, which also received an undisclosed amount of funding from cricketer Yuvraj Singh’s YouWeCan. MyGlamm also raised Rs 40 crore from L’Occitane International S.A, Indian mid-market private equity fund Tano Capital and Brand Capital earlier this year.

With Amazon’s entry into this marketplace, the competition is set to become more interesting with more innovations expected to make their way as the e-commerce looks to add more services to its kitty.