Inside Nykaa’s valuation debate; Girl-centred entrepreneurship launchpad

Hello,

It’s a strong start to the year for safe-haven bets. 

Gold extended gains on Tuesday, buoyed by rising demand after the US capture of Venezuela's president, while investors awaited US payroll data for insights into the Federal Reserve's interest rate policy.

Beyond precious metals, copper also extended a powerful rally, as investors bet on a tighter supply. Expectations that the US may introduce a tariff on refined metals have drawn huge volumes of inventory into the US, potentially leaving the rest of the world short.

Meanwhile, LVX, formerly LetsVenture, facilitated over 80 transactions in 2025, including deals in space-tech company Agnikul and omnichannel consumer brand Samosa Party. 

The company, which expanded into growth-stage deals along with the rebrand last year, saw 15% of all its deals happening at the growth-stage.

ICYMI: The AI boom has led to many K-shape economies as tech widens the wealth gap.

Moving on: Have you tasted butterfly pea tea?

Butterfly pea, also known as aparajita in India, grows as a vine and has a striking blue flower. The slightly sweet tea with a hint of woody notes has begun appearing on local tea menus and has caught the attention of entrepreneurs and farmers alike. 

Lastly, from lollipops that play music to home robots, here’s all the latest tech unveiled at CES 2026. 

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• Inside Nykaa’s valuation debate
• Girl-centred entrepreneurship launchpad
• Women building India’s climate resilience

Here’s your trivia for today: Viktor Frankl's book Man's Search for Meaning documents the writer's experiences during which war?

Ecommerce

Inside Nykaa’s valuation debate

Nykaa is no longer just a consumer internet success story. It is now a hot valuation debate. While JM Financial has reiterated a ‘BUY’ rating with a target price of Rs 325, implying meaningful upside, HDFC Securities has maintained a ‘SELL’ rating with a target of Rs 200, flagging downside risk at current levels. 

The brokerages’ divergent outlooks are not about Nykaa’s relevance in India’s beauty market, but rather, about how much of that success is already priced into the stock—and how sustainable Nykaa’s next phase of growth would really be.

Key takeaways:

• JM Financial’s optimism rests on a simple thesis: Nykaa is executing cleanly in a large, under-penetrated market, and the operating leverage is finally showing. It expects EBITDA margins to expand by ~130 basis points YoY, supported by scale, private labels and improving contribution margins.
• HDFC Securities flags a subtler risk: as private labels grow, advertising income as a share of net sales value is likely to fall, removing a high-margin revenue stream. At the same time, investments in rapid fulfilment are pushing up logistics costs, limiting further margin expansion in the core beauty platform.
• At current levels, Nykaa trades at 70x-plus near-term EV/EBITDA. While JM Financial is willing to look past this, arguing that earnings growth will grow into the multiple, HDFC Securities has called the current valuations “heady” and maintains that even flawless execution may not be enough to justify further upside.

Social Impact

Girl-centred entrepreneurship launchpad

Unlike traditional interventions that celebrate young girls’ firsts in educational contexts as the finish line, Averil Spencer and Neha Sahu see this statement as a starting point of a much longer journey.

Founded in 2020, Launch Girls helps adolescent girls in 16 countries develop skills, access economic opportunities, and challenge perceptions so they can shape their own futures.

Personal agency:

• The Girl Boss Business programme was launched online in 2020 but Spencer realised that girls needed in-person mentorship and relationship building. This led to Girl Boss Basics in 2021, a 40-hour programme that introduces girls to entrepreneurial education, mindsets and skills. 
• In India, they organised pilots across 14 states over five years. Launch Girls has partnerships with state governments in Telangana and Karnataka, working with higher education departments that run degree colleges.
• It has impacted 25,000 girls so far, out of which 18,000 are from India. With 32 partners, 750 Girl Boss Advisors, and 200 student leaders, Launch Girls is building a strong ecosystem to support girls’ leadership and entrepreneurship. 

Climate Change

Women building India’s climate resilience

Across rural India, women are responding to climate change in various roles—adjusting cropping patterns, reviving drying water bodies, documenting ecological loss, and bringing communities together to protect shared resources, often long before formal climate action plans reach their villages. 

From Odisha’s cyclone-prone coast to the drought-stricken plains of Bundelkhand and the millet-growing villages of Karnataka, the women of these regions are shaping climate resilience in practical ways—through collective efforts deeply grounded in shared experiences. 

News & updates

• Cryptocurrency: Morgan Stanley is seeking regulatory approval to launch exchange-traded funds tied to the price of cryptocurrency tokens, according to filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday, the first such move by a big US bank.
• New chip: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has officially launched the company’s new Rubin computing architecture, which he described as the state of the art in AI hardware. The new architecture is currently in production and is expected to ramp up further in the second half of the year.
• Humanoid robots: Hyundai-owned Boston Dynamics publicly demonstrated its humanoid robot Atlas for the first time Monday at the CES tech showcase, ratcheting up a competition with Tesla and other rivals to build robots that look like people and do things that people do.

Viktor Frankl's book Man's Search for Meaning documents the writer's experiences during which war?

Answer: World War II

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