What Mamaearth got right

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Editor's note: A little over two years ago, when we first wrote about Mamaearth, the baby care startup had built a Rs 100 crore brand and was expanding into dozens of product lines across personal care. The company had said it was targeting Rs 500 crore in turnover in three years, and the sentiment at the time among industry analysts was that the (then) mostly online brand would find it tough. The concern, they pointed out, was that the rapid addition of products could lead to a diffusion of the value of the brand and the management’s bandwidth. In the 2021-22 fiscal year, Mamaearth (Honasa Consumer Pvt. Ltd) generated Rs 943 crore in revenue from operations, double the Rs 460 crore it had recorded the previous year. The company also turned a marginal profit in 2020-21 (excluding a one-time expense from a fall in the value of certain preference shares), as well as in the latest fiscal year. From six products when Varun Alagh and Ghazal Alagh started it in 2016 to more than 300 now, across online and offline channels, the …