Nykaa teams up with OpenAI to bring AI-powered shopping to ChatGPT

MUMBAI: From search-and-scroll to chat-and-shop, the beauty aisle is getting a digital makeover. Nykaa is betting that the future of shopping will begin with a conversation rather than a search bar. The beauty and fashion retailer has entered a strategic multi-year partnership with OpenAI, bringing its products and expertise directly into ChatGPT while simultaneously embedding advanced AI tools across its own business operations.

As part of the collaboration, Nykaa Beauty and Nykaa Fashion have been listed as connected apps within ChatGPT, allowing users to discover products through natural conversations. Whether a consumer is looking for skincare suited to sensitive skin, a wedding outfit or a fragrance recommendation, ChatGPT can now direct them to Nykaa’s catalogue and curated offerings.

The move positions Nykaa among the early companies helping shape OpenAI’s emerging agentic commerce ecosystem, a model where AI assistants do more than answer questions and increasingly help users make purchasing decisions.

The partnership extends beyond customer discovery. Nykaa plans to integrate OpenAI’s frontier AI models across its platform to create more personalised shopping experiences, while deploying ChatGPT Enterprise and AI coding agent Codex internally to support teams across marketing, customer service, legal, finance, supply chain and operations.

The company’s engineering teams will also adopt Codex to accelerate the development and rollout of new AI-powered features, reflecting a broader push to weave artificial intelligence into every layer of the business.

The agreement opens a new distribution avenue for Nykaa’s portfolio of brands, including its own House of Nykaa labels and hundreds of partner brands, potentially giving them access to consumers through one of the world’s fastest-growing AI platforms.

The partnership builds on Nykaa’s existing investment in AI-led commerce. Over the years, the company has introduced tools such as Skin Scan, which uses computer vision to analyse skincare concerns, Virtual Try-On for beauty product evaluation, AskNykaa for conversational discovery, and AI Fashion Stylist to deliver personalised style recommendations.

The announcement comes as retailers worldwide race to adapt to a new era of AI-assisted commerce, where discovery increasingly happens through intelligent assistants rather than traditional search engines or marketplaces.

For Nykaa, the collaboration signals a belief that the next generation of shopping will be less about endless scrolling and more about meaningful conversations. As AI begins influencing everything from product discovery to purchase decisions, the company is positioning itself at the intersection of technology, retail and personalisation.

If successful, the partnership could offer a glimpse into how beauty and fashion shopping evolves in the age of artificial intelligence, one conversation at a time.