Beauty

L’Oréal to Build €326 Million Beauty-Tech AI Hub in India

By Shilpa Dhamija26 janvier 2026

L'Oréal is set to build its first ever beauty tech hub in India with an initial investment of approximately €326 million and will serve as the French beauty giant’s global flagship base for AI-driven beauty innovations. It is expected to be inaugurated later this year in Hyderabad, the capital city of Telangana state in south India.

L'Oréal is building its first beauty-tech Ai centre in the world in India. Above, Alia Bhatt, L'Oréal global ambassador from India (L'Oréal)

The announcement was made after a meeting between a senior ministerial delegation from India, and Nicolas Hieronimus, CEO, L’Oréal, in Davos on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum. L’Oréal’s upcoming Hyderabad Global Capability Centre (GCC) will focus on AI-led solutions across data, analytics as well as supply chain for global deployment, while creating 2000 jobs in India.

In addition to L'Oréal, Telangana has attracted several major AI and tech centers in the last few years including Google, Amazon and Microsoft. The largest Amazon software development center outside the U.S., is in Telangana and is heavily involved in AI, machine learning for AWS and Alexa services.

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In India, L’Oréal S.A. recorded approximately 5,979 crore INR (€554 million) sales in 2025. The company plans to double its business over the next two years by expanding its local factories, according to some media reports. L’Oréal has been operating in India since 1994 and has made several investments here, including two manufacturing plants that produce over half a billion units and also export to Gulf markets. L’Oréal has a product development centre in Mumbai and another advanced research centre in Bengaluru. About 95% of L’Oréal’s goods sold in India are made in India.

While L’Oréal has grown in India primarily through its international products, it bought Mumbai based beauty and salon brand Cheryl’s Cosmeceuticals around 2013 to strengthen its local salon portfolio. Just before the pandemic, L'Oréal's through its corporate venture capital fund BOLD (Business Opportunities for L'Oréal Development), invested in an India based venture fund - Fireside Fund II to find more suitable local partnerships in the beauty and hair care segments. Through this fund, L’Oréal bought minority stakes in an Indian skin care brand, Deconstruct, and more recently in Arata, a hair care brand.

While L'Oréal leads foreign beauty investments in India, other major players have also shown interest in manufacturing locally to serve the growing market. Estée Lauder Companies, one of the largest cosmetics companies in the world, which also owns MAC, Clinique and Bobbi Brown announced plans to make products in India, a couple of years back but hasn’t set up its manufacturing facility yet. Estee Lauder has occasionally used third party manufacturers in India to produce limited-edition products for the festive season.

Estée Lauder entered India with MAC about 20 years ago and has since grown its portfolio with nearly two dozen more brands including Jo Malone London, Kilian Paris, La Mer, Bobbi Brown, Tom Ford and The Ordinary. In 2008, Estée Lauder acquired a minority 20% stake in Indian luxury beauty brand Forest Essentials, which is now one of the top two Indian luxury beauty and cosmetics brands in the country. Since Estée Lauder’s investment, Forest Essentials has grown from 2 to about 160 stores, today.

According to some media reports, Japanese beauty giant Shiseido is also actively looking to manufacture its products in India.

In the last five years, many iconic and emerging beauty, wellness brands have entered India in every price and prestige category including HUDA beauty, Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty, Rare Beauty by Selena Gomez, Anomaly by Priyanka Chopra, Gucci, Prada beauty and Charlotte Tilbury.

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