Bengaluru: India’s top salon chains are facing a growing challenge as more beauty and grooming services move into customers’ homes, a shift that is proving difficult for businesses built around fixed storefronts to replicate.
While venture-backed platforms have popularized on-demand beauty services, salon operators say offering at-home services is far more complex than adding another sales channel. It entails challenges in scheduling, workforce deployment, logistics and quality control.
Unlike digital-first platforms built for at-home delivery, offline salon chains are now trying to adapt shop-based businesses to a model designed around doorstep services.
Naturals Salon, YLG Salon and Looks Salon have all experimented with at-home offerings but remain cautious about scaling them, citing challenges around staffing, service consistency and economics.
The pressure to adapt is growing as India’s beauty and personal care market expands. The organized salon market is expected to more than triple to $34 billion by 2032 from $11 billion in 2024, according to estimates by the India Brand Equity Foundation.
The wider home services market, which includes beauty and grooming services, is projected to grow at a 22% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) to ₹8,800 crore by fiscal year 2030 (FY30), according to strategy consulting firm Redseer. There is, however, no standalone estimate for the at-home salon segment.
Platforms set the pace
Urban Company has emerged as the clearest benchmark for the category, effectively defining how at-home beauty services can be scaled profitably through logistics, standardization and pricing control.
Its services segment recorded operating revenue of ₹1,060 crore in FY26, accounting for nearly 70% of total revenue. The company does not detail a break-up of at-home beauty services within the segment.
Yes Madam, another popular platform for at home beauty services, has raised ₹50 crore from Info Edge and nearly doubled revenue to ₹92.5 crore in FY25 while remaining profitable. On-demand domestic-help service provider Snabbit has also entered the beauty segment.
Noting the positive outcomes from this growing segment, Ambit Capital said there was increasing formalization through online channels, improving price transparency and earnings visibility for professionals.
This platform-led ecosystem is reshaping discovery, pricing and fulfilment, setting the operational benchmark that salon chains are now trying to match.
Incumbents struggle
Naturals Salon, YLG Salon and Looks Salon, established salon chains operating across India’s organized beauty segment, have all experimented with home services, but remain cautious due to execution constraints.
“In a salon, I can control the SOPs, the environment, the products and the customer experience. All this is not possible in the home salon,” said Rahul Balachandra, chief executive and co-founder of YLG Salon.
Operators cite scheduling, stylist reluctance, travel time and inconsistent service conditions as core barriers. YLG’s home-services business remains a single-digit share of revenue and is not being aggressively scaled.
Even when demand exists, execution friction limits expansion. Naturals Salon receives about 100 home-service orders daily in Bengaluru, with an average ticket size of ₹1,800–2,000.
Many experienced beauticians are reluctant to travel to homes, preferring the safety and infrastructure of salons, while logistics in cities like Bengaluru add additional routing inefficiencies.
The constraints are not new. In 2016, Mumbai-based salon chain Enrich acquired on-demand beauty startup Belita to strengthen its home services push, but the business was eventually shut down after scaling challenges.
At the time, several offline chains had bet on home services as a future growth driver, but execution difficulties derailed early attempts—making this a second wave of experimentation rather than a first.
For Naturals, internal alignment has also been difficult. Franchise partners initially feared cannibalization of salon footfalls, forcing the company to spend nearly a year piloting models before arriving at a revenue-sharing hybrid structure.
A different proposition
For salon chains, the move into at-home services is as much about defence as growth. Executives say consumers increasingly expect convenience and on-demand access, forcing traditional players to follow customers into their homes, rather than risk losing them to digital-first platforms.
“A salon business is like an airline or hotel business. On weekends, we’re running at over 100% capacity, but on weekdays utilization can drop to 40%. If home services can lift that to 60%, it works better for us,” said Kumaravel C.K., founder of Naturals Salon.
Notwithstanding the growing popularity of at home salon services, many premium chains remain unconvinced that these can replace traditional salons.
YLG estimates home services account for only 9–10% of the total beauty and grooming services market.
“There is an inherent limitation of home services,” Balachandra said. “The bulk of salon services are still at the salon.”
And Looks Salon believes home services remain viable only for low-complexity, convenience-led offerings such as waxing, threading or basic nail services, but not for higher-value categories.
“The real money lies in hair. And hair is difficult to do at home,” said Samir Srivastava, chief executive of Looks Salon. Looks offers home services selectively at a 25-30% premium for its existing customers but does not see it becoming a standalone business.
The popularity of platform-led salon at home services is not just about them eating into the salon business, it is also about the cropping up of new demand, say some industry experts.
Salon executives acknowledge that on-demand platforms have created new consumption habits, rather than merely shifting demand away from them. Quick, low-ticket services such as threading, waxing and manicures are increasingly being booked by busy professionals and residents of large apartment complexes who may not have otherwise visited a salon as frequently.