Earlier this month, e-commerce firm Myntra turned Mumbai’s MMRDA Grounds into a giant carnival with music and fashion with its Glamstream Fest. The event saw over 10,000 attendees, including 3,000 creators and more than 30 participating brands. Myntra says 10% of its revenue is directly attributable to its content strategy.
Beauty e-tailer Nykaa took its annual Nykaaland beauty festival to Delhi this month, after hosting it in Mumbai for the first two iterations. This year’s gathering featured over 60 brands and 30,000 participants, including celebrities and creators.
Amazon held the second edition of its invite-only Beautyverse in July for Prime members, influencers and celebrities that saw over 1,400 people in attendance, 30+ brands and 200 creators.
E-commerce firms are clearly going beyond standard marketing and vanilla creator collaborations, pushing the envelope with experiences that are bringing fashion, music, beauty and pop culture together. Whether it is Himesh Reshammiya singing to throngs of fans or Sushant Divgikar and Neena Gupta talking about inclusivity and authenticity in beauty, the core objective is to allow people to belong to a brand and its community rather than simply being a passive shopper.
Judging by the response from consumers, they cannot be dismissed as fads. Nykaaland, for instance, has seen attendance double from 15,000 in 2023 to 30,000 this year. Likewise, Myntra Creator Fest, the brand’s first creator-led event, started with just around 200 creators, a number that has grown more than tenfold this year. Sunder Balasubramanian, chief marketing officer, Myntra, says the event, now rechristened as Glamstream Fest, is not just a marketing tool but a core part of the company’s business strategy. “Creators today generate 10% of our revenue, so this is clearly an ROI-based output programme. We now work with over 3,50,000 creators every month and these include mega creators, micro creators and even shoppers,” he adds.
Inside the rise of retail festivals
Despite this encouraging early success, these big-ticket events are still a long way from becoming actual revenue streams. Manish Solanki, COO & co-founder, TheSmallBigIdea, says these events are yet to become mature intellectual properties (IPs). “Right now, ticket sales barely cover operational costs, let alone generate meaningful profit. Nykaaland operates as a three-day festival with ticketing through BookMyShow, but the real monetisation isn’t happening at the gate, it’s happening through indirect revenue,” he states, adding that ultimately, these kinds of experiential touchpoints can build brand recall and emotional connections that pure digital commerce cannot replicate.
So what makes a Myntra or a Nykaa spend big bucks — an event of that scale is estimated to cost anything upwards of `50 crore depending on venue and number of days — on them?
Customers increasingly seek immersive experiences, personalised tools, and access to diverse brands, as Siddharth Bhagat, director at Amazon Fashion and Beauty explains. Beautyverse was born because of this fundamental shift in India’s beauty landscape. “This shift is being driven by Gen Z and millennial consumers, rising demand from tier-II and III cities, and a growing appetite for trend-led, tech-enabled, and creator-powered discovery,” he notes.
Hosted just ahead of Amazon’s Prime Day sale, Beautyverse helped create a high-energy discovery ecosystem. “We see this platform as a long-term strategic asset that helps us build trust, advocacy, and inspiration-led commerce, especially ahead of key tentpole events,” Bhagat adds.
Results money can’t buy
E-commerce brands cannot survive on digital touchpoints alone. Consumers seek meaning, community and credibility offline, points out Rutu Mody Kamdar, founder, Jigsaw Brand Consultants.
She explains that these branded events solve three things at once. “First, they create cultural legitimacy. Second, they drive discovery of brands simplifying the overwhelming choices before consumers when they shop online. For categories like beauty and lifestyle, that physical experience directly influences conversion. Thirdly, these events become a content engine. One day of an on-ground event equals weeks of organic content that money can’t usually buy,” observes Kamdar.
Last year’s Myntra Creator Fest for example created over 3 billion impressions on social media, and Balasubramanian is confident that number could be even higher this year. In fact, the brand plans to double its investments on creator and influencer marketing in the next 18 to 24 months because of these results.
