Prajakta Rathe is a growth and performance marketing leader with over 15 years of experience across beauty, retail, and app-led commerce. She currently serves as Deputy General Manager at Reliance Retail, where she leads growth for Tira Beauty and built the platform’s digital growth function from launch, scaling it to over ₹100 crore in revenue. Her role spans acquisition, media investment, SEO, affiliates, and growth strategy, with a focus on connecting brand storytelling to measurable business outcomes. Prajakta has previously held senior roles at The Good Glamm Group, SUGAR Cosmetics, and BookMyShow, and has worked closely with global platforms such as Google and Meta on large-scale growth initiatives.

In this interview, she reflects on the shift from chasing metrics to building durable growth—highlighting the roles of trust, creativity, and disciplined execution in scaling beauty and retail brands.

You’ve moved from performance roles into full P&L ownership. What ways of thinking became essential once growth decisions started carrying revenue accountability? 

Once growth decisions sit on the P&L, the biggest shift is moving from optimising channels to optimising outcomes. Performance marketing trains you to chase efficiency metrics; P&L ownership forces you to ask whether that efficiency is durable.

Three mindset shifts became critical:

• From ROAS to contribution margin: A high-ROAS channel that cannibalises organic demand or erodes AOV is not growth – it’s displacement. Every decision has to be viewed through net contribution, not isolated efficiency.
• From short-term wins to repeatability: You stop asking “Did this work?” and start asking “Can this work at scale, across months, cohorts, and demand cycles?”
• From channel optimisation to system thinking: Growth is no longer a media problem. It’s an interplay of supply, pricing, experience, retention, and brand trust. Media is only one lever in a larger economic system.

Revenue accountability forces discipline. It removes the comfort of tactical success without business impact.

 

Beauty has shifted from blitzscaling to a more credibility-led phase. What tells you a category is ready for sustainable scale rather than aggressive acquisition? 

A category is ready for sustainable scale when trust signals outperform discounts.

There are three indicators I look for:

• Conversion stability without heavy incentives: When CVR holds even as discounts taper, it signals belief – not just deal-seeking.
• Content-led discovery starts outperforming pure performance hooks: If education, routines, and peer validation drive engagement and assisted conversions, the category is maturing.
• Repeat behaviour tightens: Shorter time-to-second-purchase and higher cross-category adoption indicate confidence, not curiosity.

“Blitzscaling works when discovery friction is low. Beauty today is the opposite – users want proof, reassurance, and context. Scale follows credibility, not the other way around.”

 

As acquisition costs rise, retail media is often positioned as the next efficiency lever. How do you judge whether it’s genuinely improving growth quality versus simply moving budgets around?

Retail media improves growth quality only if it creates incremental behaviour, not just captures high-intent demand that already existed.

I evaluate it on three dimensions:

• Incrementality, not efficiency: Does it bring in new buyers, new baskets, or faster repurchase – or just inflate ROAS on users who were already close to converting?
• Impact on brand health: Are brands building visibility and consideration, or just competing harder for the same last-click users?
• Portfolio balance: If retail media disproportionately benefits already-large brands, it risks narrowing the ecosystem rather than expanding it.

“Retail media is powerful—but only when treated as a demand-shaping tool, not a last-mile bidding war.”

 

Trial and confidence remain critical in beauty. How have tools like AR and virtual try-ons meaningfully reduced friction in the purchase journey, and where do they still fall short?

AR and virtual try-ons work best as confidence accelerators, not decision-makers.

Where they help:

• They reduce anxiety for first-time buyers, especially in colour cosmetics.
• They shorten evaluation time by helping users eliminate poor-fit options quickly.

Where they fall short:

• They cannot replicate texture, wear, or real-world lighting, which are critical in beauty.
• Over-polished simulations sometimes increase skepticism rather than trust.

The real value emerges when AR is combined with UGC, reviews, and contextual education. Technology reduces friction- but trust closes the sale.

Having led growth across single brands and multi-brand portfolios, how does your approach to creative change when the goal is demand creation rather than pure conversion? 

When the goal is demand creation, creative stops selling and starts shaping mental availability.

Key shifts include:

• From “why buy now” to “why believe”: Messaging focuses on relevance, routine fit, and credibility rather than urgency.
• From SKU-led to category-led narratives: Especially in portfolios, you grow the category first, then let brands win within it.

From performance formats to cultural formats: Creatives need to feel native to how people consume content, not how platforms optimize delivery. Conversion creative closes demand. Demand creative creates it. Confusing the two is one of the biggest growth mistakes brands make.

In an omni-channel setup spanning apps, marketplaces, and physical retail, what internal gaps most often prevent teams from delivering a seamless growth experience? 

The biggest gap is not technology- it’s misaligned incentives.

Common friction points include:

• Channel silos optimising for local wins instead of shared customer outcomes.
• Inconsistent customer understanding across online and offline touchpoints.
• Delayed feedback loops, where insights from one channel don’t inform decisions in another fast enough.

Seamless growth requires a single view of the customer and a shared definition of success. Without that, omni-channel becomes multi-conflict.