Mamaearth parent's Q2: stores outgrew online. What brands learn

Honasa Consumer, the company behind Mamaearth, The Derma Co, Aqualogica and Dr. Sheth's, reported its September quarter results on 6 November 2026. The headline was profit. The more useful detail for anyone running creator campaigns is where the growth came from: shops grew about twice as fast as e-commerce.

What did Honasa report for Q2 FY27?

According to Inc42, revenue from operations rose 35.9% year on year to ₹731.2 crore, from ₹538.1 crore, and net profit rose about 87% to ₹73.2 crore, from roughly ₹39 crore. BW Businessworld and NewsBytes report the same profit and revenue figures, and put EBITDA at ₹93.2 crore with a 12.7% margin. The two outlets give slightly different year-ago EBITDA bases (₹48.2 crore and ₹47.5 crore), so treat the exact growth rate on that line with care.

Co-founder and CEO Varun Alagh called it the company's "highest growth since listing", as quoted by Inc42 and Businessworld.

Compared with the June quarter, the picture is softer. Inc42 notes that profit fell 19% from ₹90.4 crore and revenue slipped 3.3% from ₹755.9 crore.

Where did the growth come from?

This is the part worth studying. As reported:

• General trade: Honasa now reaches about 3.2 lakh outlets, and Inc42 says secondary sales in this channel grew 40% year on year.
• Modern trade: offtake grew more than 40% (Businessworld, NewsBytes).
• E-commerce: grew 20% year on year, according to Inc42.
• Younger brands such as The Derma Co, Aqualogica, Dr. Sheth's, BBlunt and Staze grew more than 45%, all three outlets report. NewsBytes says The Derma Co is expanding across more than 65,000 retail outlets.
• Mamaearth itself is on a "high-teens" growth path, per Inc42 and NewsBytes. The company does not publish brand-level revenue.

Focus categories such as face cleansers, shampoos, serums and sunscreens grew over 40% and now make up more than 80% of the business, Inc42 and Businessworld report.

Why does this matter for influencer marketing?

Honasa is one of India's best-known examples of a brand that built demand online before it built distribution. Its own IPO filing listed reliance on celebrities and social media influencers as a business risk, as Business Insider India reported when the draft papers were filed.

So when a company like this grows faster in kirana stores and supermarkets than on marketplaces, it says something about how creator content earns its keep at scale. A shopper who saw a sunscreen in a Reel may buy it two weeks later at a chemist, with no link click and no coupon code. If the only metric on the campaign report is clicks and code redemptions, that sale is invisible.

None of the reports give Honasa's ad or influencer spend for the quarter, so we cannot say how its marketing mix shifted. What the numbers do show is that a digital-first brand's next phase of growth is happening where most attribution tools cannot see.

Is this a signal to cut creator budgets?

Not on this evidence. E-commerce still grew 20%, and the company did not say it reduced marketing. The fair reading is narrower: as a brand moves into retail, creator content's job shifts from driving immediate online orders to making a product familiar enough that people pick it off a shelf.

Our take from Delhi

Most D2C brands we speak to in Delhi NCR still judge creator campaigns only on swipe-ups and code sales. That is fine for a brand that sells only online. Once you are in modern trade or local stores, add a brand-search check, a store-level sales comparison by city, or a simple recall survey, and brief creators to show the pack clearly so it is recognisable on a shelf.