Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],

There is a harsh truth about storytelling. It doesn’t always work. At least, not in the way you might expect it to. 

Take Indian author Vikram Seth, who once famously received a hefty advance of about 200,000 pounds (US$277,000) for his epic 1993 novel—A Suitable Boy. More recently, though, in 2013, he was asked to return an advance of US$1.7 million that his publisher had paid him to write a sequel to that book. 

Seth, perhaps, took comfort in the worldview he had espoused a few years before that setback, when he held that failure (or the way the world perceives failure) does not bother him. 

This week, I’m going to extrapolate this publishing sector learning to the public markets. Because whether you are an author with a novel to sell or a listed company with a narrative, there are some things you just cannot control. 

Like beauty and personal care major Nykaa, for instance, whose share prices dropped below its initial public offering (IPO) issue price this week. 

But just how much of this is due to factors outside its control?

Nykaa’s setback is temporary, and the journey is long

Nykaa became an investors’ favourite the minute it went public on the stock market a year ago. Back then, I’d written in Inciting Incident about how news outlets had celebrated the brand’s market debut—not only did its parent company FSN e-Commerce Ventures hit a valuation of Rs 1 lakh crore (US$13.5 billion), the Rs 5,352-crore (~US$720 million) IPO tripled founder Falguni Nayar’s net worth and turned her into India’s newest billionaire.

It was a moment in the sun, a cracker of a market debut for an e-commerce player that had pioneered online cosmetics since 2012 and had become India’s largest online beauty and cosmetics retailer in just seven years. (This story The Ken did in 2019 does much to cover its journey from inception).

It did that by bringing in a slew of new beauty brands to India and creating acceptance for online shopping for cosmetics; it became a venture capital and private equity investor favourite.