Bengaluru: Mensa Brands is delighted to announce that it has partnered with 10 digital-first businesses. Mensa, India’s first tech-led House of Brands, has invested in ten brands across fashion, home, and beauty, and the Founders and their teams will become part of Mensa.
Mensa’s vision is to partner and invest in digital-first brands and scale them exponentially. Over the next 3 years, Mensa will acquire 50+ brands across categories including home, garden, apparel, personal care, and beauty.
Speaking on the occasion Ananth Narayanan, Founder, and CEO of Mensa Brands said, “We are excited to announce our partnership with ten remarkable founding teams that have created beloved digital brands. We are committed to propelling their journey forward and working together to build global breakout brands from India. At Mensa, we are passionate about using technology to build digital brands that are rooted in bringing joy to our customers.”
The partner brands include:
- Karagiri, a one-stop destination for high-end, designer sarees for the modern woman, based out of Pune;
- Priyaasi, a traditional and contemporary jewelry brand from Delhi that boasts of traditional artwork and materials in modern designs, making it relevant for all occasions;
- Dennis Lingo, a men’s casual wear brand from Mumbai that is a leading player in shirts on Indian marketplaces;
- Ishin, a women’s ethnic wear brand from Mumbai, is known for its range of traditional as well as fusion Indian Clothes Collection, such as kurtas, kurtis, sarees, drapes, and accessories;
- Hubberholme, an affordable men’s casualwear brand from Delhi with a focus on high street style fashion and athleisure;
- Anubhutee, a women’s ethnic wear brand from Jaipur, known for its high quality, stylish and traditional designs, handcrafted to suit consumer sensibilities and aspirations;
- Helea, a smart home-device company from Mumbai, focussing on improving lives through innovative & affordable IoT products with a mission to make life easier, safer and greener for a better tomorrow;
- Villain, a men’s personal care company from Ahmedabad, that offers a range of fragrances, apparels, and accessories, including sunglasses, gym wear and more
These brands pan across 5 cities and serve millions of customers in India and around the world. They are fast-growing, profitable category leaders that are on the cusp of becoming breakout brands and household names.
Ashutosh Valani, co-founder of Villain (who has previously founded the men’s grooming company, Beardo) commented, “We really look forward to being a part of the Mensa family. We will work together to build Villain into a household-name lifestyle brand for men across India. This is the beginning of a long and fruitful partnership, one that hopefully lasts across many brands.”
“We are excited to partner with Mensa as they are an experienced team that understands how to sustainably scale brands on e-commerce “, says Charu Agarwal, Founder of Ishin. She adds, “Over the past couple of months working with Mensa we have already started increasing our sales by working together on growth, supply chain, and marketing, leveraging working capital, data, technology, and the team’s e-commerce experience.”
Karagiri’s Founder, Pallavi Mohadikar Patwari mentioned, ”We are thrilled about building a digital-first saree brand out of India. We believe that the Mensa team is best positioned to help us with this journey. The process of the partnership was fair, fast, and founder-friendly.”
Mensa partners with brands that have revenue between $1 million and $10 million. It targets digital-first brands operating in different categories, including fashion and apparel, home and garden, beauty and personal care, food, and others. We are fast and founder-friendly and close end-to-end acquisitions within 4-6 weeks. Mensa believes that e-commerce in India is at the inflection point of non-linear growth and that we can build global brands from India.
Mensa has offices in Bangalore, Mumbai, and Gurugram and plans to scale its team exponentially in the coming months, hiring across growth, product, finance among others.
