Brands
Shoppers Stop doubles down on luxury beauty gamble
MUMBAI: Shoppers Stop is betting big on lipstick and mascara. The Mumbai-based department store chain disclosed on 25 November that it has pumped an additional Rs 10 crore into Global SS Beauty Brands, its wholly-owned beauty subsidiary, bringing total investment in the venture to Rs 105 crore.
The infusion, completed through a rights issue of preference shares, marks the fourth tranche of funding since April when Shoppers Stop’s board approved investing up to Rs 50 crore in the beauty operation. The company has now exceeded that ceiling, signalling confidence in a subsidiary that has grown explosively—turnover surged from Rs 14 crore in FY 2022-23 to Rs 220 crore in FY 2024-25.
Global SS Beauty Brands operates speciality beauty stores and distributes cosmetics, positioning itself as the “partner-of-choice for leading international brands” in India’s luxury beauty market. The subsidiary is in expansion mode, using the fresh capital for new stores and working capital as it chases market share in a sector where affluent Indian consumers are increasingly trading up to premium products.
The timing is shrewd. India’s beauty and personal care market is booming, driven by rising incomes and social media-fuelled demand for international brands. Shoppers Stop, facing pressure in its core department store business, is hedging its bets by building out a dedicated beauty platform.
Whether Indians will buy enough Chanel and Dior to justify a Rs 105 crore wager remains to be seen. But Shoppers Stop is clearly convinced the future smells of expensive perfume.
Brands
YES Bank appoints S Anantharaman as chief risk officer
Former Jio Financial Services group chief risk officer takes charge of enterprise-wide risk at the embattled private lender
MUMBAI: YES Bank is not taking chances with risk anymore. The private lender has appointed S Anantharaman as its chief risk officer, a hire that signals the bank’s continued effort to rebuild credibility and tighten the controls that once famously slipped.
Anantharaman arrives from Jio Financial Services, where he served as group chief risk officer and built a risk management architecture spanning lending, payments, insurance broking and asset management from the ground up. Before that, he held the chief risk officer role at Bank of Baroda and senior leadership positions at HDFC Bank and L&T Finance Holdings. Three decades in banking and financial services, in other words, with scars and qualifications to match. He is a chartered accountant and a CFA charterholder.
At YES Bank, his brief is considerable. Anantharaman will oversee the bank’s entire enterprise-wide risk framework, covering credit policy, market risk, operational risk, information security, data governance, analytics, model governance and data privacy. It is, in short, every lever that matters when a bank is trying to prove it has grown up.
YES Bank’s turbulent past needs little rehearsing. What it needs now is exactly what Anantharaman has spent thirty years building: the kind of risk culture that stops problems before they become headlines. The appointment suggests the bank knows it.
