Good Glamm's "momentum trap": Darpan Sanghvi details how over-acquisition led to crisis
Once seen as a rising star in content-to-commerce, the Good Glamm Group is now grappling with the fallout of its rapid expansion and acquisition spree.
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The Good Glamm Group's ambitious growth strategy, built on a series of aggressive acquisitions and business pivots, is now facing critical introspection from within. In a social media post, Darpan Sanghvi opened up about how the company fell into what he calls a “Momentum Trap” — a scenario where too many initiatives were launched too quickly and at too large a scale.
At the center of this momentum trap was an acquisition frenzy. The company bought 11 firms within a short time, creating a complex business portfolio that combined multiple founder visions, operational styles, and strategic goals. “Our focus shattered. Despite constantly investing, resources were always stretched thin, chasing too many battles to win any of them,” Sanghvi wrote.
Once praised for uniting beauty, content, and influencer marketing into one ecosystem, Good Glamm struggled to manage the growing internal complexity. It entered five different beauty and personal care categories without fully scaling a single brand. At the same time, it attempted to build both a tech-first direct-to-consumer business and a traditional offline retail presence. In parallel, it also invested in setting up an independent media and creator house, pulling focus further away from its core operations.
According to Sanghvi, this created a fragile foundation. “We scaled untested ideas, magnifying every small flaw into a business-threatening problem,” he noted.
The company’s pace added to the instability. Within nine months, it completed 10 acquisitions, leaving little time to learn from or integrate each one. Revenues surged from 50 crore to 640 crore in just two years, but losses rose just as fast. Efforts to launch offline stores in 50 cities, expand direct-to-consumer orders from 100,000 to 1.5 million per month, and scale all five brands nationally happened at the same time. This led to overinvestment and increasing operational complexity.
“Every headline, every funding round, every big launch feels like fuel. But the faster you go, the more blind spots appear,” Sanghvi reflected.
