India’s beauty market is thriving, but it has a copy-paste problem

New Delhi: India prides itself on multiplicity. We celebrate jugaad, remix culture, jugaadu innovation and the ability to adapt anything to our own context. But there’s an uncomfortable undercurrent running through the country’s booming beauty market. A quiet copy-paste economy that is becoming too loud to ignore.

Scroll through social media, browse a marketplace, or walk into a modern retail store, and the déjà vu is hard to miss. Familiar pastel tubes. Frosted lip pots. Concealers shaped just like cult American bestsellers. Ingredient-led positioning that feels eerily global. It raises a nagging question: are we building brands or are we building duplicates?

The list of alleged lookalikes is long and growing.

Hyphen, the skincare label co-founded by actor Kriti Sanon and PEP Technologies (the team behind mCaffeine), has faced online criticism and user allegations of being a copy or “dupe” of Rhode Skin.

Myntra and Vellvette Lifestyle, the maker of Sugar Cosmetics, recently launched Molten Beauty, a new skincare and makeup label aimed at Gen Z consumers. Almost immediately, beauty watchers pointed out that Molten Beauty’s lip balm bore a striking resemblance to Laneige Lip Sleeping Mask.

Makeup artists often cite PAC Spotlight Concealer as a widely recognised dupe for Tarte Shape Tape. Eyeshadow palettes from Mars Cosmetics and Swiss Beauty are frequently noted as affordable alternatives to e.l.f. Cosmetics. Kay Beauty eyeshadow sticks are often compared to Laura Mercier.

And that’s barely scratching the surface.

The safety in sameness mindset

For many founders, the answer begins with risk. Malini Adapureddy, Founder and CEO of Deconstruct, doesn’t deny the pattern but frames it as strategic pragmatism rather than creative laziness.

“Familiar formats and global cues reduce consumer hesitation and help brands scale faster, which is why many brands choose them.”

“Replication feels efficient. A global template comes with in-built consumer familiarity. It has been validated somewhere and has a visual language people recognise. But familiarity lowers the barrier to trial, not loyalty. The moment a newer, cheaper version shows up, the cycle resets. The mindset driving this is speed over substance,” said Taniya Pandey, CMO, VLCC Group.

For Rumi Ambastha, Marketing Head, Puresta, the real tension begins when ideas are expected to come with references.

“The problem happens when you try to execute an idea and are asked to share a reference so others can understand it. If your idea has a reference point, then by logic it's not an original idea.”

Brand solutions expert Hemal Majithia, Founder of OktoBuzz, views the copycat conversation less emotionally and more economically.

“India’s ‘copy-paste beauty economy’ is less about lack of creativity and more about reducing risk and accelerating scale. When a global brand establishes a winning product format, ingredient story, or visual code, it validates demand. Indian brands entering that space are stepping into a market where consumer education is already done.”

Kruti Soni, CMO at Anahata Organic, explained the psychology behind this familiarity bias.

“Beauty is a high-trust category, so familiarity lowers hesitation. Using formats or ingredient stories consumers already recognise globally makes adoption faster and shortens the education cycle.”

The algorithm ate originality

The pressure is not just consumer-driven. It is structural. Soni pointed out that digital platforms inadvertently reward sameness.

“Digital platforms unintentionally reward familiarity. Algorithms optimise for patterns that have already demonstrated conversion. This includes packaging aesthetics and influencer formats. Over time, performance marketing stops being just a distribution tool and begins shaping brand design itself.”

When CAC and ROAS dashboards dictate boardroom decisions, brand design risks becoming a derivative of performance templates.

“The challenge facing Indian brands today is not capability. Manufacturing quality, storytelling talent and consumer insight have never been stronger. The real gap is strategic patience. Truly distinctive brands take longer to compound equity and often underperform in early performance metrics, the very metrics investors and marketplaces tend to prioritise,” she added.

Pandey reflected on how the collapse of global trend cycles is shaping consumer demand.

“The lifecycle of global adoption has collapsed. What once took years to travel across markets now goes viral globally within minutes, and consumers immediately look for an accessible version at home.”

She warned that the beauty market’s growing obsession with short-term traction could dilute brand identity.

“The market is currently tilting towards traction over trust. Most campaigns in the beauty space today are tactical and short-lived. They ride a trend, extract short-term sales and move on. But brands aren't built on resemblance. They are built on resonance.”

Meanwhile, Majithia believes the phenomenon is partly consumer-driven.

“Consumers discover global beauty trends through social media long before those brands are affordable or widely available in India. Domestic brands bridge that gap by offering similar formats at accessible price points.”

The speed versus substance dilemma

For Ambastha, the imitation debate is not purely about copying. It is about how originality is defined in a market obsessed with speed.

“One side of the story is the preference of familiarity over originality, and the other is that imitation is the best form of flattery. As a marketer or creator, the only bargaining chip you own is your idea.”

But she believes patience is increasingly difficult in an ecosystem that rewards velocity.

“Brands that think long term and have the appetite for consistency will spend time nurturing an idea and building it properly. But today’s ecosystem rewards speed, which makes it harder for brands to build slowly.”

There is also a cultural layer.

“Indian consumers are highly aspirational but also extremely value-conscious. When global trends create desire, local brands step in to democratise access. This may happen through pricing, ingredient localisation or distribution reach,” Soni added.

She situates this behaviour within a broader economic pattern.

“In many ways, this mirrors how Indian industries historically scaled. Adapt global innovation, optimise for local affordability and expand access. The danger lies when brands compete only on price or resemblance rather than contextual relevance.”

Pandey explained how the ecosystem itself often discourages originality.

“Because the ecosystem currently rewards replication, not invention. The playbook that gets funded, gets shelf space and gets influencer amplification is built around pattern matching. Investors want proven models. Retailers want products that fit existing search categories. Algorithms reward what looks familiar.”

The fine line between dupe and dispute

Advocate Sushant Chaturvedi explained that in India, brand protection runs on two tracks.

“In India, brand protection operates on two parallel tracks. One is statutory infringement, and the other is common law passing off. A registered trademark enjoys exclusive protection under Section 28 of the Trade Marks Act, 1999, and infringement is actionable under Section 29 without the need to prove reputation. Passing off, however, protects even unregistered marks but requires proof of goodwill, misrepresentation and damage.”

He summarised the legal boundary simply.

“Inspiration is lawful. Imitation that trades on another brand’s goodwill is not. The moment a product is designed to be recognised as something else, rather than merely competing with it, legal risk begins.”

The implication is clear. Packaging, trade dress and visual identity can become legal battlegrounds if similarity crosses into confusion. But litigation is expensive, and global brands may not always pursue action unless Indian lookalikes materially damage market share or brand equity.

The fork in the beauty aisle

VLCC’s Pandey noted that despite better tools and insights, the category risks becoming increasingly homogenous. “We are seeing an industry that has access to everything except patience. The tools are there. Data, distribution, design capabilities and global insights. But the output looks increasingly homogenous because the brief has not changed. ‘Make it look like what is already winning.’”

Majithia argued that India has seen the copy-paste playbook before. “In beauty itself, we have seen this pattern. Sugar Cosmetics entered with bold matte lip formats that were already trending globally, while Mamaearth adopted clean, ingredient-led positioning popularised internationally. The formats were not entirely new, but both brands built strong Indian identities through distribution and cultural relevance.”

Adapureddy cautioned that resemblance cannot be a long-term strategy. “Long-term brand equity cannot be built on similarity alone. As the Indian beauty ecosystem evolves, differentiation will increasingly come from credibility, formulation integrity and consumer trust.”

Pandey believes the next generation of beauty brands will emerge from founders willing to prioritise meaning over metrics. “Distinctive brands will come from founders who build for meaning first and metrics second, and understand that real identity is earned over years of consistently standing for something.”