Pitch to Get Rich’s Darpan Singh reveals how his Rs 7,000 crore beauty empire crashed overnight: ‘I kept burning to grow’

In a new interview with Think School Hindi by Zero1, Darpan Singh reflected on the mistakes that led to Good Glamm’s downfall — mistakes that forced the group to sell its individual brands piecemeal. Each of these, including MyGlamm, The Moms Co., Sirona, St. Botanica, Organic Harvest, and several others, will now be independently led by new owners.

Good Glamm had been hailed as a revolutionary “house of brands,” blending personal care with digital media through platforms like POPxo and BabyChakra — the backbone of its content-to-commerce model. Founded in 2017, it quickly grew in valuation — from Rs 40 crore in 2020 to Rs 650 crore by 2023 — before its steep decline within a year.

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Looking back, Darpan admitted that his biggest mistake was letting growth blind him.

“I should have known when to stop and consolidate,” he said, adding, “Instead, I kept burning to grow. The same momentum that made me a unicorn turned into a trap — what I now call the ‘momentum trap.’”

After achieving unicorn status in early 2020, Darpan continued chasing expansion.

“I had raised money, finished acquisitions — that was the time to take a breath and stabilise. But instead, I pursued my biggest acquisition yet — a Rs 3,000 crore deal that could have doubled my valuation to USD 2 billion. I spent six months on it, trying to show monthly growth instead of fixing the P&L. I burnt a lot of money.”

He reflected on how startups must define one core metric per quarter — something he ignored. “In January 2022, my key goal should have been CM2 profitability — profit after marketing costs. But because I wanted to raise money for another acquisition, I chased topline growth at the cost of the bottom line,” he admitted.

The numbers tell the story.

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“In 2021, my only focus was customer acquisition. By the end of the year, we had 3.5 lakhs transacting customers every month. I should have made those transactions profitable, but I didn’t. I lost 1.5 years — and around Rs 600 crore.”

The rapid expansion also led to organisational chaos.

“We went from 200 to 1,200 employees in three months. We had 11 companies, multiple founders, and too many senior hires from large corporations. I lost my core team in the process,” he said.

In his pursuit to turn Good Glamm into the “next Unilever,” Darpan admits he lost everything he built over eight years.

“I wanted everything. I moved from online to offline, burned Rs 300 crore there — trying to achieve 10 years of growth in one year. I bought companies back-to-back, launched campaigns with multiple celebrities — all at once,” he shared.

Even his investors warned him.

“Andre kept telling me, ‘Darpan, get profitable.’ But I told him, ‘You run an old-school business. L’Occitane is old school.’ I didn’t listen,” he said regretfully. A thought, he said, haunts him every night.

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