The Body Shop bets on pricing reset, localisation & store expansion to drive India growth

The Body Shop India is sharpening its growth strategy around scale, accessibility, and cultural relevance as it looks to deepen its presence in one of its most important international markets. Operated by Quest Retail under a master franchise agreement, the British ethical beauty brand is expanding its physical footprint while recalibrating prices, localising parts of its portfolio, and exploring collaborations under new global ownership by the Auréa Group.

The brand operates in a highly competitive natural and ethical beauty category in India, where homegrown digital-first players such as Mamaearth, MCaffeine, WOW Skin Science, and Renee Cosmetics compete alongside international brands like Lush. These players have shaped consumer expectations around clean ingredients, sustainability narratives, frequent launches, and accessible price points, raising the bar for established global brands.

Against this backdrop, expansion remains central to The Body Shop’s India playbook. Rahul Shanker, Group CEO of Quest Retail, says the brand currently operates “approximately 200 odd stores” in the country. “The objective is to take this number to upwards of 400 over the next five years,” he says, adding that these are company-owned stores, supported by shop-in-shop formats across large retail chains and a presence on major third-party e-commerce platforms.

Shanker says the focus on physical retail sets The Body Shop apart at a time when several beauty brands are rethinking store-led growth. “As we speak, we are opening new stores and renovating our earlier stores,” he says. “We are very, very bullish on retail expansion, quite contrary to what you otherwise hear in the market about other brands.” 

According to him, this confidence reflects a broader shift at the global level following the Auréa Group acquisition last year in September. “There have been a couple of years where there was a bit of a slowdown in expansion, but now it has really picked up pace,” he says, pointing to “a lot of creative and resource infusion into the organisation at a global level”.

That renewed momentum is visible in the brand’s financial performance in India. Shanker says the company is set to close 2025 on a strong note. “We are going to end the year with a strong double-digit growth, which means that the strategy was absolutely spot on,” he says. He adds that this marks a significant improvement from 2024, when uncertainty around the brand’s global operations weighed on performance.

Recalibrating prices

A key driver of this turnaround has been a deliberate recalibration of pricing. Shanker says close to 40 percent of The Body Shop India’s business comes from entry-level products, prompting the brand to reduce prices across more than 60 SKUs. “We really brought the prices down for the entry price point products, by as much as 25 to 30 percent for the consumer,” he says. With GST changes, he adds, some prices dropped even further. “Very unlike where the rest of the industry is going.”

According to Shanker, consumers have responded positively to this move. “Our volumes have really gone up,” he says, noting that strong revenue growth has been accompanied by even stronger volume growth. At the same time, he emphasises that pricing decisions are not uniform across categories. “Different product formats and different categories will have different price points,” he says, explaining that consumer expectations vary between skincare, bath and body, and makeup. 

Beyond pricing, localisation is emerging as another pillar of the India strategy. Shanker says the brand has begun manufacturing select products locally, giving it greater agility and relevance.

“We have brought in products now which we are also making in India,” he says, adding that this has allowed the brand to respond more closely to Indian consumer preferences. “The idea is to stay as relevant to the Indian consumer as we can,” he says.

The Body Shop's business footprint

Geographically, The Body Shop’s footprint reflects a strong push beyond metros. Shanker says nearly half of the brand’s stores are already in Tier 2 cities. “Fifty percent of our stores are in Tier 2,” he says, though he adds that these stores currently account for around 35 percent of total business. “We are a little under-leveraged as far as Tier 2 and Tier 3 is concerned,” he says, noting that per-store throughput remains higher in Tier 1 locations.

At the same time, Shanker challenges rigid definitions of urban tiers. “All tiers, one, two, three, four, five, exist within a five-kilometre radius of where you are,” he says, arguing that even large metros contain a mix of consumer segments. From a regional standpoint, he says North, West, and South India contribute almost equally to the business, while the East lags slightly due to broader developmental factors. Even so, he notes that the brand already operates stores in Tier 3 cities in the eastern region.

On Marketing

As the business scales, brand-building efforts are focused on staying culturally relevant in a crowded category. Harmeet Singh, chief brand officer at The Body Shop India, says collaborations are becoming an important lever. “The Body Shop is a very open-minded brand where we want to collaborate with young brands that our consumers are loving and can associate with,” she says.

This thinking underpins the brand’s recent collaboration with Ayurvedistry-led beauty label indē wild, timed for the Christmas season and India’s ongoing wedding calendar. Rooted in shared values of sustainability and authenticity, the partnership introduces curated premium gifting boxes aimed at brides, wedding guests, and self-care rituals.

Singh says the collaboration allows the brand to participate in culturally meaningful moments. “In India, gifting is very important, especially during weddings,” she says, adding that the initiative helps the brand reach consumers beyond its core audience.

The collaboration also coincides with The Body Shop’s annual Christmas collection, a global tradition for the brand. Singh says the 2025 edition features three winter-centric fragrances. “This year we have unveiled three very warm and cosy fragrances for Christmas, Cranberry Crush, Caramel, and Sugar Plum,” she says. According to her, the collection does not cater to a narrowly defined target group. “There is no age as such for this fragrance,” she says. “It is loved by all.”

In terms of marketing execution, Singh says the Christmas campaign draws on both global and locally created content. “We have some beautiful content which our global teams have developed, and we also have Indian content developed locally so that it resonates very well with customers,” she says. The campaign runs across physical stores and online platforms, supported by influencer collaborations.

Influencer marketing, Singh says, remains an important channel for reaching specific consumer cohorts. “We do believe in influencer marketing because we feel there is a pool of influencers who really help us reach our customers,” she says. She adds that influencers are chosen carefully. “We choose our influencers very mindfully,” she says, noting that alignment with the brand’s values around sustainability and ethical sourcing is a key criterion.

Reflecting on the year’s broader marketing efforts, Singh points to the Entry Price Point campaign launched in the first half of 2025 as a defining initiative. “We very consciously decided to do an entry price point campaign in H1,” she says, adding that it was designed to support the pricing recalibration and expansion into Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. 

On celebrity endorsements, Singh notes that The Body Shop has historically worked with several well-known figures. “We were one of the first beauty brands to collaborate with Dia Mirza way back in 2010,” she says, adding that the brand has also worked with Jacqueline Fernandez, Shraddha Kapoor, and Sanya Malhotra. While there is no celebrity ambassador at present, she says the brand remains open to future collaborations if the fit feels right.

Customer experience is another area of focus as competition intensifies. Singh highlights the brand’s workshop store format, introduced in India in 2021, as a differentiator. “These workshop stores actually reflect the sustainability that The Body Shop believes in,” she says. Designed as experiential spaces, the stores showcase sustainable materials and the brand’s refill, return, and recycle programme. “Our stores are not only places where you pick up products and leave,” she says. “You come and experience what The Body Shop offers in terms of its values.”