Meet Mensa Brands, one of Asia’s fastest and India's 37th unicorn of 2021
The direct-to-consumer (D2C) house of brands startup Mensa Brands raised Series B funding of $135 million at a valuation of over a billion dollars. So far, Mensa has raised a total of over $300 million in equity and debt.
The direct-to-consumer (D2C) house of brands startup Mensa Brands raised Series B funding of $135 million at a valuation of over a billion dollars. So far, has raised a total of over $300 million in equity and debt.
Mensa is now one of the fastest unicorns in Asia, after attaining the status within six months of its inception.
The startup was launched in May 2021 by Ananth Narayanan with a vision to partner and invest in digital-first brands across fashion and apparel, home and garden, beauty and personal care, and food and scale them exponentially.
The new unicorn — 37th during 2021 — works closely with founding teams to accelerate growth on marketplaces through the brand's websites and global platforms by using a combination of initiatives across product, pricing, marketing, distribution, and brand building with a technology platform at the core.
The latest investment round was led by Alpha Wave Ventures | Falcon Edge Capital, with participation from all existing investors — Accel Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, and Tiger Global Management. Prosus Ventures (Naspers) also invested in Mensa in this latest funding round.
Already profitable, Mensa will use the funding to continue partnering with founding teams of customer-loved brands and help them become household names. Besides, it’ll invest in hiring across functions and continue building out its tech platform and other growth capabilities.
Check out YourStory's full coverage of TechSparks 2021 here.
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The Interview
Leaders from , , , , and reveal how the startups overcame operational challenges and quickly worked towards evolving their offerings to meet the new needs of their customer base in the past 18 months.
Watch this CTO Roundtable hosted in association with Google Cloud India.
Editor’s Pick: Product Roadmap
Six years ago, Soham Chokshi, Dhruv Agrawal, Himanshu Gupta, and Sahil Arora started Shipsy to address the challenges in the last mile delivery segment. They realised the supply chain and logistics sectors are all connected.
In this week’s Product Roadmap, we feature Shipsy, which has built a complete logistics management platform, empowering enterprises and logistics providers to automate, optimise, track, and simplify end-to-end supply chain operations. Read more.
Startup Spotlight
earKART taps into hearing aid devices market
Online platform offers hearing aid devices and services. Founded by Rohit Misra, the Noida-based startup claims to have a network of around 800 dealers with a presence in 181 locations.
Launched in September 2021, earKART sells around 20 hearing aids a day and targets to take that number to 200 a day within the next three months. Read More.
News & Updates
- , the Bengaluru-based startup that accelerates the growth of D2C brands, announced the acquisition of 11 direct-to-consumer brands from various categories.
- Ola's General Counsel Sandeep Chowdhury has resigned after a nine-month stint with the company, according to sources. The development comes close on the heels of CFO Swayam Saurabh and COO Gaurav Porwal also having left the company. These exits come ahead of Ola's plans to go in for an initial public offering (IPO).
- GENLEAP, a Gurugram-based startup that combines technology capabilities of HR and education segments, has raised Rs 60 crore in a seed round of funding from a group of angel investors.
Before you go, stay inspired with…
“There has to be more wealth creation in public markets than in private markets.”
— Nithin Kamath, Founder and CEO, Zerodha
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