Amazon’s Beautyverse blends content, commerce and cart nudges

When 1,400 beauty enthusiasts—ranging from creators and Prime members to Bollywood actots like Bhumi Pednekar and Neena Gupta—gathered for the second edition of Amazon Beautyverse on Saturday, it wasn’t just another influencer event. Strategically placed weeks before Amazon India’s marquee Prime Day sale (12–14 July), it was designed as both a spectacle and a conversion engine.

Beautyverse reflects Amazon’s broader ambition: to not just host beauty brands, but actively shape how beauty brands are discovered, and bought in a hyper-fragmented digital marketplace. This year’s invite-only event brought together over 1,400 beauty lovers, including Prime members, creators, and brands, who participated in immersive workshops, trend-led storytelling, beauty tech innovations.

Beautyverse’s timing is no accident. In 2024, Amazon’s Prime Day saw a 24% surge in Prime member participation, the highest to date. During the two-day event, a record 24,196 orders were placed in a single minute.

A playbook is clearly in motion: use immersive brand storytelling through events like Beautyverse to spark desire, then harness Prime Day’s urgency to convert it. This is especially for categories like beauty and personal care (BPC), a segment that Amazon is betting big on.

India’s BPC market is on a trajectory that few sectors can match. According to HSBC Global Research, the market will grow from $19 billion in 2022 to $90 billion by 2037. That’s a fivefold jump in just over a decade—fuelled by rising incomes, deeper e-commerce penetration, and a generation of digital-first consumers reshaping expectations around discovery and access.

And it’s not just metro India leading this charge. “Roughly 65% of Amazon’s orders and 85% of new customers come from tier 2–4 towns,” Siddharth Bhagat, director of Amazon Beauty India told Campaign, pointing to the platform’s reach beyond the urban elite.

Building a creator-first commerce engine

In a market where consumer attention is hard-won and short-lived, Amazon’s bet on creators is strategic, not cosmetic. “Creators are at the heart of how beauty is discovered today—they’re not just recommending products, they’re educating, experimenting, and inspiring,” Bhagat said. “We strongly believe in creators and have multiple internal workstreams catering to not only building efficient ways to engage with influencers but also building strong relationships with them and Amazon Beauty.”

With over 60,000 creators onboarded via its Creator Program, the platform is building a full-funnel system that integrates storytelling with transaction. Tools like Amazon Live (for real-time demos), Creator University (for upskilling), and AI safeguards (to flag inauthentic reviews) are part of this infrastructure. It's a model built less on virality and more on credibility at scale.

In a market where consumer attention is hard-won and short-lived, Amazon’s bet on creators is strategic, not cosmetic.

“Amazon Beautyverse isn’t just about beauty trends — it’s about the people who shape them,” said beauty creator Yashi Tank. “Being part of this journey with Amazon means having a front-row seat to how beauty in India is becoming more expressive, inclusive, and community-driven.”

Experience as a conversion tool

Beautyverse’s second edition brought together not just product showcases but immersive experiences: interactive brand zones, panels on inclusivity and beauty ideals, and creator-led tutorials using Amazon’s AI-powered beauty tools. The event’s line-up featured new launches from brands like Hyphen, CeraVe, Laneige, TFIT, Milani, Real Techniques, and Lamel—many of which have become staples for digital-first Indian beauty consumers.

Actor Bhumi Pednekar noted during a panel discussion that the event was a “showcase of where online beauty is headed — to immersive trials and tech-driven diagnostics — every touchpoint felt designed to educate, inspire, and engage.”

Veteran actor Neena Gupta, too, framed it as a reflection of shifting norms. “I have seen beauty ideals shift dramatically over time. Amazon Beautyverse reflects a positive evolution — a space that celebrates self-expression and authenticity across generations.”

Siddharth Bhagat, director of Amazon Beauty India with actor Bhumi Pednekar.

For Bhagat, the event is an extension of a broader positioning exercise. “Beautyverse is not just an event — it’s a powerful movement reflecting Amazon Fashion’s commitment to democratising beauty in India,” he said. “It’s part of our broader strategy to build deep trust and drive high-intent discovery by blending the offline and online beauty experience.”

Content, commerce and conversations

This strategic triangulation—of creators, tech, and community—comes at a time when competition is heating up. From Nykaa to Reliance’s Tira, beauty platforms are going full throttle in product diversification, loyalty programs, and private labels.

What sets Amazon apart is its scale and tech muscle. “With tools like Virtual Try-On and SkinCare Advisor, we are enabling customers to discover and shop beauty more confidently,” said Zahid Khan, director of Central Shopping Experience, Amazon India. “We are helping creators tell richer stories and enabling customers to discover and shop beauty more confidently.”

The company’s beauty inventory includes over 1,300 homegrown and 60 international brands, supported by curated stores like the Derma Store, Global Beauty Store, Premium Edit, and K-Beauty verticals. These are designed not just for discovery but for education and conversion.

According to Bhagat, the K-Beauty category is growing at an impressive 75% year-on-year, with skincare dominating the segment. “Make-up has seen a 12x spike due to the recent success of newly launched brands in 2025,” he revealed.

Tier 2 and Gen Z: The new growth frontiers

Amazon has also been proactive in building storefronts tailored to specific demographics. Serve (formerly the Next Gen Store), targeted at Gen Z, is a case in point.

“Since the launch, we have seen a 3X increase in our Gen Z customer cohort on Amazon Fashion and a 4X increase in shoppers from tier two cities,” Bhagat noted. “With Serve, we’ve witnessed 40% YoY growth from tier two and three cities.”

These growth pockets are significant not just for beauty brands but for platform stickiness. As more consumers from smaller towns get comfortable buying premium skincare and colour cosmetics online, the cart size and purchase frequency are expected to rise—especially during events like Prime Day, which now functions as both a brand showcase and a stock-clearing festival.

Amazon has been proactively building storefronts tailored to specific demographics, including Serve (formerly the Next Gen Store), which is targeted at Gen Z.

Cart abandonment remains a nagging issue across e-commerce. Amazon is countering this through frictionless tech that integrates discovery, diagnostics, and decision-making.

Bhagat highlighted innovations like the Skincare Analyser, embedded within Amazon Search. “Customers can take a short survey about their skin type and goals. Tools like these—paired with real-time tutorials and reviews—help reduce uncertainty and nudge purchase.”

But the big swing is in generative AI. “We believe generative AI will revolutionise virtually all customer interactions as we know them,” Bhagat said. “One such is Rufus, an expert shopping assistant trained on Amazon’s product catalogue and information from across the web, designed to answer customer questions, provide product comparisons, and make personalised recommendations.”

It’s an attempt to humanise the digital storefront—making recommendations smarter, comparisons contextual, and choices easier. In beauty, where sensory cues are often absent online, these tools help close the trust gap.

Beauty as belief system

What Amazon is building isn’t just a marketplace—it’s a media and community ecosystem where shopping is a consequence, not the starting point. Events like Beautyverse function as both demand generators and cultural barometers. They reflect how India’s beauty landscape is becoming more expressive, inclusive, and individualistic—with creators playing educator and advocate, and platforms like Amazon acting as enablers.

The next challenge will be sustaining this velocity. As more players enter the space, and as beauty preferences evolve from trends to value-driven choices (sustainability, transparency, efficacy), platforms will have to evolve from distributors to co-creators.

Bhagat is clear-eyed about the path ahead. “We are seeing an upward growth of 45% YoY in premium segments,” he said. “The growing influence of beauty creators is transforming how trends are shaped, and trust is built—a shift we’re celebrating and amplifying through events like Amazon Beautyverse.”

In a market that’s often obsessed with launches, Amazon’s bet is longer term: Build experiences that inspire action, relationships that outlast campaigns, and systems that convert curiosity into commerce.

And if Beautyverse is any indicator, they’re not just following trends—they’re trying to shape them.