D2C beauty brand Plum turns around in FY25 with Rs 25 Cr PAT

Direct-to-consumer beauty and personal care brand Plum has managed to script a turnaround in FY25, achieving profitability on the back of steady double-digit growth and controlled expenses.

Plum’s revenue from operations rose 23.3% to Rs 402 crore in FY25 from Rs 326 crore in FY24, according to its financial statements sourced from the Registrar of Companies (RoC). 

Founded in 2013, Plum sells skincare, bodycare, fragrances, haircare, and gifting products through its own website and third-party e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and Flipkart. Revenue from product sales continues to be its only operating stream. It also added Rs 17 crore from interest income and gains on mutual funds, which took the company’s total income to Rs 419 crore during the last fiscal year.

When it comes to expenses, Plum is no different from other D2C brands as advertising and promotion remained its largest cost at Rs 139 crore in FY25, though this was down 7% from the previous fiscal. Cost of materials consumed stood at Rs 128 crore, while employee benefit expenses rose 20.8% during the fiscal year ending March 2025.

During the last fiscal year, storage, commissions, freight, legal, and other overheads pushed its total expenditure to Rs 400 crore.

The combination of revenue growth and expense rationalisation helped Plum post a profit after tax of Rs 25 crore in FY25 as against a loss of Rs 84 crore in FY24. On a unit level, it spent Re 1 to earn a rupee of operating revenue during the fiscal year.

Profitability metrics also saw a marked improvement with EBITDA margin and ROCE turning positive at 6.22% and 5.3%, respectively. At the end of FY25, the company’s total current assets were valued at Rs 269 crore, including Rs 92 crore in cash and bank balances.

Plum has raised over $50 million across rounds, including its $35 million in a Series C round led by A91 Partners with participation from existing investors Unilever Ventures and Faering Capital in March 2022. In the D2C beauty space, Plum competes with Juicy Chemistry, Wow Skin, MamaEarth, and Sugar Cosmetics among many others.

Operating in what is clearly a crowded marketplace with both startups and established incumbents, Plum has done well to keep growth going and move into the black. However, keeping it that way will not be easy, considering the nature of the marketplace.  The market remains shallow, and for most firms, well penetrated, leaving broader economic growth and expansion as the best hope for the category as a whole. For Plum, that might mean seeking newer avenues like exports, or portfolio tweaks which will not be  easy to manage if the focus is to remain on staying profitable. The positioning as India’s first vegan beauty brand is good, but certainly not powerful enough to move customers towards it in ever larger numbers for now. We believe the firm is poised to make a decisive move accordingly, either as an attractive acquisition target, or perhaps, a hopeful sprint towards say, a Rs 1000 crore target by 2030 to deliver for all its stakeholders now.