Brands
Snack to the future as Buybuycart rolls out B2 Premium private label
MUMBAI: When supermarkets start thinking premium, the snack aisle gets a serious upgrade. Buybuycart has expanded its private label strategy with the launch of B2 Premium, a new range of snacks and food products aimed at high-frequency, everyday consumption categories. The move marks a deliberate push to strengthen Buybuycart’s in-house portfolio as competition intensifies across India’s organised retail space.
Positioned as a quality-first offering, B2 Premium spans a wide assortment that includes dry fruits, flavoured makhana, chips, cookies, cakes, candies, tea, condiments and other pantry staples. The range is designed to balance taste and nutrition, with products processed and sourced to retain natural flavour and nutrients, making them suitable for both daily use and gifting.
According to Buybuycart director and co-founder Ashish Pandey the private label expansion is a key step in building a more robust product ecosystem. He noted that the B2 Premium range is expected to be distributed across 200 to 300 Buybuycart franchise stores nationwide, significantly widening reach and accessibility while reinforcing the brand’s value proposition for franchise partners.
The products will be available across Buybuycart’s offline franchise network as well as online through Amazon and the company’s official website. Select items will also be accessible via the company’s quick-commerce offering, Buybuycart – Grocery in Minutes, which is currently being rolled out in markets where franchise stores are operational.
With B2 Premium, Buybuycart joins a growing list of Indian retailers betting on private labels to drive margins, loyalty and scale. By stepping deeper into everyday food categories, the chain is signalling that in modern retail, owning the shelf increasingly means owning the brand on it.
Brands
Estée Lauder to shed 10,000 jobs as new boss bets on digital shift
The cosmetics giant raises its profit outlook but stays silent on a possible merger with Spain’s Puig, as job cuts deepen and a three-year sales slump weighs on the turnaround
NEW YORK: Stéphane de La Faverie is not done cutting. Estée Lauder announced on Friday that it plans to eliminate as many as 3,000 additional jobs, taking its total redundancy programme to as many as 10,000 roles, up from a previous target of 7,000 announced a year ago. The company, which owns La Mer, The Ordinary, Tom Ford, and Aveda, employs roughly 57,000 people worldwide. The mathematics of what is now being contemplated is stark.
The fresh round of cuts is expected to generate a further $200 million in savings, bringing the total annual savings from the programme to as much as $1.2 billion before taxes. That money, De La Faverie has made clear, will be ploughed back into the turnaround.
A CEO in a hurry
De La Faverie, who took the helm in January 2025, inherited a company that had endured three consecutive years of annual sales declines. His response has been to move fast and cut deep. A significant portion of the latest redundancies reflects his push to reduce headcount at US department stores, long a cornerstone of Estée Lauder’s distribution model but now a channel in structural decline. In their place, he is accelerating the shift toward faster-growing online platforms, including Amazon.com and TikTok Shop, a pivot that is reshaping not just where Estée Lauder sells but how it thinks about its customers.
The numbers are moving in the right direction
Despite the pain, there are signs the medicine is working. Estée Lauder raised its profit outlook for the remainder of the fiscal year, guiding for adjusted earnings per share in the range of $2.35 to $2.45, above analyst estimates and a notable step up from the $2.05 to $2.25 range it had guided for in February. Organic net sales growth is expected to come in at 3 per cent, the company said, at the high end of the range it set out in February.
The share price tells a mixed story. After De La Faverie took charge, the stock surged nearly 60 per cent, buoyed by investor optimism that a longtime company insider could finally arrest the decline. But 2026 has been rougher: the shares have fallen 27 per cent this year, weighed down by disappointing February results and the overhang of unresolved merger talks with Spanish beauty giant Puig Brands SA. The company gave no additional details about those discussions on Friday, leaving the market to guess.
Silence on Puig
The proposed tie-up with Puig remains the most consequential unknown hanging over Estée Lauder. A deal with the Barcelona-based group, which owns brands including Carolina Herrera and Rabanne, would reshape the global luxury beauty landscape. But with nothing new to say and a turnaround still very much in progress, De La Faverie is asking investors to trust the process.
Three years of sales declines, 10,000 job cuts, and a merger that may or may not happen. At Estée Lauder, the overhaul has barely started.
