LOVETC by Ananya Birla, a Celebrity Beauty Brand on Shopify
LOVETC is the colour cosmetics brand Ananya Birla launched in April 2025, with actor Janhvi Kapoor as its face. Eighteen months on, it sells lipsticks, eye makeup and face products through its own Shopify store at lovetc.com and on Nykaa. This is the story of the brand, and a look at how its D2C store sells premium makeup to Indian buyers: naming, shades, gifting, offers and checkout. It is useful reading for anyone building a celebrity beauty brand online.
ExactWhy did not build LOVETC's store and has no connection to the brand. Launch facts are from the press coverage linked below. Store details are as seen on lovetc.com on 3 October 2026, and prices or offers may have changed since.
What is LOVETC?
LOVETC is a premium, made-in-India colour cosmetics brand from Birla Cosmetics Private Limited, part of the Office of Ananya Birla within the Aditya Birla Group. According to afaqs' launch report of 15 April 2025, the launch range covered lipsticks, long-wear eyeliners and volumising mascaras, sold first on the brand's own D2C website and on Nykaa, with a phased retail expansion planned across 200 stores in the top 20 cities. The same report says the brand aims for a 5 to 8% share of India's cosmetics market.
Ananya Birla framed the brand around quality rather than price: "Price is not what defines luxury, the quality of the product does. Better quality at a better cost, LOVETC offers a fresh new take on beauty."
Why does LOVETC have two famous names?
Because they do different jobs. Ananya Birla is the founder: a singer, entrepreneur and member of one of India's best-known business families. Her name explains why the brand exists and gives it credibility as a serious venture. Janhvi Kapoor is the brand ambassador, announced at launch and featured in the campaign film, per afaqs' coverage of the debut. Her job is reach and aspiration with the brand's core buyers.
That founder plus face model is common in beauty, and it shapes the store. A founder-celebrity brand can lean on the founder's story. A face-led brand has to make the product visible and desirable on its own, because the ambassador can change but the store's job does not. In her launch words, Ananya Birla said she has "always gravitated towards beauty that's simple, effective, and enhances who you are." The store's job is to make that promise concrete, product by product.
What is the LOVETC store built on?
lovetc.com runs on Shopify, on Minimog, a premium third-party Online Store 2.0 theme, customised for the brand. That is a different route from, say, Flux Theory, Ranbir Kapoor's shower brand, which uses a fully custom Hydrogen storefront, as we described in the story of Flux Theory's store.
For a makeup catalogue, a strong theme is a sensible base. Beauty stores need what good themes already do well: colour swatches, product galleries, quick add to cart, wishlists and filtering across a large range. The brand work then goes into content, naming and offers rather than rebuilding the plumbing. The page code also references India-focused tools common on D2C stores: GoKwik and Razorpay Magic Checkout for checkout, Simpl for pay later, Shiprocket for shipping and Judge.me for reviews. There is a WhatsApp button and a help chat on every page.
A third-party theme does come with a trade-off worth planning for. The more a brand customises it, the more work each theme update becomes, because changes have to be carried across to the new version. Brands on themes like this usually keep a record of every customisation and test updates on an unpublished copy first. Our guide to updating a customised Shopify theme safely explains the routine.
How does LOVETC name and organise a makeup range?
With a naming system that carries the brand name into every product. Many LOVETC product names follow the pattern of three words ending in "Etc", echoing LOVE ETC itself:
- Pout, Perfect, Etc, a moisture shine lipstick
- Curl, Conquer, Etc, a curling, lengthening and volumising mascara
- Ace, Face, Etc, a blur matte foundation
- Matte, Muse, Etc, a smudge-proof crayon lipstick
- Define, Desire, Etc, a longwear lip liner
Each name is followed by a plain description of what the product is, so it still works for search and on Nykaa listings. A newer line, Alter Ego, sits alongside with its own banner on the homepage and in the menu. The navigation itself is simple: Alter Ego, All, Lips, Eyes, Face, and Kits and Combos.
Shade names add personality without getting in the way. The Pout, Perfect, Etc lipstick, for example, comes in 16 shades with names like Sugar Rush, Velvet Toast, Boss Mauve and Cabernet Kiss. The naming idea is close to what we described in how celebrity brands turn a persona into a store: personality in the name, function in the description.
Image: screenshot of lovetc.com, taken 3 October 2026. ExactWhy did not build this store.
What does a LOVETC product page do to win the order?
Taking the Pout, Perfect, Etc lipstick page as seen on 3 October 2026, the page answers a beauty buyer's questions in order:
- Price and saving. Rs 893 against a struck-through Rs 1,050, with a "Save 15%" badge, marked tax included.
- Shade choice on the page. All 16 shades as colour swatches, with newer shades tagged "New", so a returning buyer can spot what has changed.
- A prepaid nudge on the button. The Buy It Now button carries "5% off on prepaid orders", which encourages online payment over cash on delivery at the moment of decision.
- A delivery window. An estimated delivery range is shown under the buttons.
- Short proof points. Nature infused, cruelty free and vegan, paraben free, then an ingredients graphic further down.
The prepaid nudge is worth noticing for any Indian D2C brand. Putting the incentive on the button itself, rather than only inside checkout, is a simple way to shift the payment mix. Our guide to reducing COD and RTO on Shopify explains why that matters for margins.
How does LOVETC use gifting and bundles?
Heavily, and in two ways. The announcement bar across the store on 3 October read "Get Free Full Size Product On Every Purchase", and the catalogue includes free-gift versions of products, such as concealer shades and a kajal, priced at zero. That is how Shopify stores usually run gift with purchase: the gift exists as its own product so it can be added to orders automatically and tracked in stock.
Bundles carry the rest. The store lists curated sets at several levels, from lip duos and trios such as The Cozy Browns Lip Pair and a Mauve-to-Berry Bestseller Edit, to larger gift sets like The Haute Glam Ensemble and The LOVETC Vanity Vault. Named edits like these do two jobs: they raise the order value, and they solve the shade problem for a buyer who does not know where to start. Our articles on Shopify bundles and where upsells actually work go into the mechanics.
Photo: homegets.com via Flickr, CC BY 2.0
Why sell on lovetc.com when Nykaa is the biggest beauty platform?
Because the two do different jobs. Nykaa brings beauty buyers who are already shopping and comparing. The D2C store is where the brand controls everything: the full range including new lines first, its own gifting and bundles, the brand's look and voice, and the customer relationship for repeat purchases. For a premium brand, that control over presentation matters as much as the reach.
It also means the store has to stay consistent with the marketplace on price and offers, or buyers will notice. We cover that balance in our guide to selling on Shopify alongside marketplaces.
What can other celebrity beauty brands learn from LOVETC?
- Give the founder and the face different jobs. Founder story for credibility, ambassador for reach, product pages for the sale.
- Build a naming system, not just names. A pattern like "X, Y, Etc" makes every product feel like the brand.
- Put shade choice on the product page. Swatches and "New" tags beat separate pages per shade.
- Use gifting and named edits to raise order value and help first-time buyers choose.
- Nudge prepaid at the button, not only in checkout.
- Start from a strong theme when the range is large and the work is in content and offers.
Building a celebrity beauty or D2C brand on Shopify?
Free launch planning call. We build Shopify stores for founder-led and celebrity D2C brands, including the store for AQUON, the hydration brand from cricketers Yuzvendra Chahal and Ishant Sharma. Get in touch or email hello@exactwhy.com with the subject "Celebrity beauty brand" and a line on the brand and launch plan. We reply within 4 hours with what the store needs and what we would do first. More on how we work in our page on celebrity ecommerce website development.