Before Katrina Kaif was one of Bollywood’s biggest stars, she was just a teenager experimenting with makeup.
“It’s been one of my great loves,” she said in an exclusive interview with The Business of Beauty.
Unlike Gen-Z and Gen Alpha today, who scour TikTok for beauty tutorials, Kaif got the A-list treatment working with India’s top makeup artists on film sets like “Namastey London,” and “Dhoom 3.” It was there that she fully understood the power of beauty — “it can be fun, it can be celebratory, but it can also be transformative” — and saw the potential for her own line, Kay Beauty, which launched as a joint venture with India’s biggest beauty retailer Nykaa in 2019.
Six years on (and about 26 in the making), the line has become India’s fastest-growing celebrity-founded beauty label, scaling up 56 percent year-on-year to ₹2.5 billion ($28.6 million) in gross merchandise value thanks to the success of formula-forward hits like Hydra Crème Lipstick and Jelly Blush.
Now Kaif has set her sights on the global stage, launching in the UK on Sept. 3 via specialty retailer Space NK.
When it lands on Space NK gondolas this September, it will be the latest Indian-founded beauty label to enter the UK retailer’s tightly-edited prestige lineup, an indicator of the market’s openness to diaspora brands with credible product, clear positioning and operational muscle.
The timing is strategic. The UK’s South Asian diaspora, which comprises 8 percent of the country’s population, remains underserved, and founder-led brands continue to resonate. Combined with Nykaa’s momentum — in its second quarter 2025 earnings, beauty revenue rose 24 percent and profits more than doubled — the brand is ready for a global push.
The question now is whether Kay Beauty can translate a culturally-rooted proposition into sustained UK performance. The market is mature and well-penetrated, and even brands with stronger local name recognition have to grapple with adjusting pricing, shade matching and offering the right amount of retail theatre in one of beauty’s most competitive arenas.
Why the UK Now
For Nykaa and Kay Beauty, the UK represents a high-stakes trial. The country’s beauty consumer is among the most trend-aware globally, yet remains hungry for discovery-led brands with a founder story and cultural depth. Crucially, the UK’s South Asian diaspora is largely underserved in prestige colour cosmetics, particularly when it comes to complexion and undertone-matched products.
“Before we’d even had a formal conversation, I was hearing Kay Beauty and Katrina [Kaif]’s name pop up in different parts of the UK,” said Margaret Mitchell, Space NK’s chief commercial officer, adding that this was especially true in cities with larger South Asian diasporas like Leicester and Birmingham. “We started to see a breakout level of [Google] searches — big four-digit percentage lifts — where you think, okay, there’s momentum here and people are trying to get their hands on this brand,” said Mitchell.
Space NK saw Kay Beauty’s range as both culturally specific and broadly competitive. Its hero categories for the UK — eyes, lips and complexion — tap directly into product gaps Mitchell’s team sees in its current assortment (priced between £6–£20 [$8–$27] for the UK market). “Kay Beauty’s formulations bring that intensity of pigment and performance, but they’re also wearable for everyday use, which is where we see crossover potential,” said Mitchell.
Kay Beauty’s track record in the United Arab Emirates offered a blueprint. There, for its launch in March 2024, the brand leveraged community activation, collaborations with regional influencers, and timing launches around cultural moments like Eid. For the UK, the approach will be similar: it will have full displays in 15 stores, with marketing activations planned around Diwali and other key cultural moments, alongside mainstream campaign placements.
Kaif sees the UK as an opportunity to share the depth of Indian beauty culture, from cinema to festivals, in a way that feels universal. “India’s beauty traditions are vivid and diverse — you see them in our colours, celebrations and weddings. Kay Beauty celebrates that spirit while staying personal to each individual,” she said.
Nykaa’s co-founder Adwaita Nayar added, “We’re rooted in India, but our products can win anywhere. It’s about being authentic to where we come from while connecting with the local consumer.”
A Global Playbook
For Space NK, bringing a brand to the UK is a selective and gruelling process. Mitchell said they look for something “truly differentiated” — whether that’s product innovation, a resonant founder story or an authentically engaged community. Strong home market performance matters, but so does the ability to address a domestic white space and have the operational backbone to keep pace in a competitive market. A brand’s potential lies in its crossover appeal.
“If we do our job right, someone in Birmingham will find the eyeliner they’ve been searching for, and someone in London who’s never heard of Kay Beauty will discover a lipstick they can’t live without,” said Mitchell.
Kay Beauty’s foundations are well-aligned. Kaif is “deeply involved from the get-go… not just a face” and active in product development, storytelling and campaign narratives — a factor Nayar said has been critical to authenticity and consumer trust.
The UK prestige beauty landscape is also shifting. Sephora’s re-entry in 2023 has been marked by highly theatrical store launches — from the “nightclub energy” of its Westfield White City flagship to queues snaking around Birmingham Bullring — while drugstore chain Boots is doubling down on curated premium edits, from limited-edition beauty vaults to exclusive collaborations with titles like Women’s Health. Space NK’s competitive advantage, Mitchell said, lies in its ability to create “360-degree moments” like the retailer deployed recently for Rare Beauty and Glossier.
After comparing its audience with Nykaa’s, Space NK identified pockets of existing Kay Beauty demand that it could unlock, with Birmingham and Leicester’s larger south Asian communities providing prime locations for store and brand launches.
Launching for the Long Haul
Kay Beauty’s UK debut is not a one-off experiment, but part of broader brand-building architecture. Nykaa already has 12 owned brands across beauty and fashion, Nayar points out. “[Beauty] has been a breakout division for us, growing at about 60 percent year on year,” he said, adding that 18 percent of beauty top line revenue is from owned brands.
But going global requires more than a strong domestic base. Mitchell said a common pitfall was brands entering a new market “without truly understanding the local customer and thinking they can just transplant their home strategy.” Misreading seasonal buying patterns, shade preferences or even the cultural resonance of a name can be costly. “You have to adapt without losing your brand’s essence,” she said. In the UK, it expects best-sellers to include Kajal eyeliner, lip oils that consistently sell out in India, and a well-edited complexion range designed for broader undertone accuracy.
For Kaif, placement at Space NK is both strategic and symbolic. “Space NK is iconic … We’re incredibly proud to be the first Indian-founded beauty brand on the shelves,” she said. “I believe it signals that Indian beauty has a powerful voice right now on the global stage.”
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