Meet Ananth Narayanan, wine collector who built Rs 9,900 crore company in just 6 months, holds recor

Ananth quit his high-paying CEO job in 2019 to embark on an entrepreneurial journey where he built two big brands in a matter of just two years.

Ananth Narayanan was already well-admired in corporate circles as the CEO of leading ecommerce brand Myntra. But then he ventured out to create his own businesses. One his second shy, Ananth founded a company that touched the billion-dollar valuation and achieved the ‘unicorn’ tag in the fastest time for a startup in India. Ananth Narayanan is the founder of Mensa Brands, India’s first ecommerce roll-up company worth $1.2 billion (over Rs 9,900 crore).

Ananth founded the company over a year into the Covid-19 pandemic in May 2021. Within a month, he raised $50 million in the venture’s first funding. Mensa touched the $1 billion valuation after raising funds to the tune of $135 million just six months after its inception. 

A wine lover with his own invaluable collection Ananth is an engineer with degrees from Universities of Madras and Michigan. He worked in top posts for leading MNC McKinsey and Company and then led Myntra-Jabong as its CEO. He then left the high-paying job to co-founder Medlife.com and run it as CEO. Pharmeasy eventually bought Ananth’s first entrepreneurial venture. 

With Mensa, Ananth spotted an opportunity, still emerging in the US market. The company acquires and builds ecommerce brands, attempting to turn small merchants products into household names. Ananth modelled his company after the American unicorn Thras.io, which is valued at around $5 billion and has over a hundred Amazon third-party sellers in its kitty.

The word Mensa means constellation in Greek, which could translate to the business model of a cluster of digital-first brands under one organisation. Mensa has partnered with over a dozen brands, recorded a year-on-year growth rate of 100% and touched Rs 1,500 crore revenue rate. 

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