Mensa Brands expands into US, Middle East and other global markets

Net revenue is the sale value of goods excluding returns and discounts.

This comes at a time when the roll up commerce sector is facing headwinds, with the likes of Thrasio cutting costs amid a change of CEO.

Narayanan told ET that over 30% of the company’s revenue now comes from markets outside India, and that 50% of its brand portfolio is available outside the country. Mensa operates in the US, UAE, Canada, UK, Germany and Singapore through marketplaces and its own platform. “We are not burning money in any brands, we are only using the money that we have raised to acquire new brands,” said Narayanan.

The company aims to double its net revenue run rate to Rs 3,000 crore over the next year, and will hire 700 more people to double its team size to 1,400 as it eyes further expansion in India and abroad.

Mensa already operates 20 online brands and will look to add another 20 more. Narayanan expects some deals to be relatively cheap owing to the slowdown in startup funding. The company said it has also turned Ebitda (earnings before interest, tax and depreciation)-positive excluding the one-time deal expense to acquire its brands.

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“We had a very good start to the year. We are at Rs 1,500 crore in net revenue run rate, we have more than 20 brands, organic growth rate of these brands is over 80%,” said Narayanan. Mensa operates brands across fashion, lifestyle and home and Narayanan said the company may look at entering a new category this year.

He described the company’s technology as the “secret sauce” that has helped Mensa achieve scale with positive unit economics.

“There is demand side and supply side. On the demand side we have built out brand analytics, we have built out pricings, there is API integration with Amazon, Flipkart, Ajio, Myntra,

. We have the ability to look at real-time data, pricing, reviews and ratings, we scrape the ratings. On the supply side, we have warehouse management, inventory management, order management and forecasting models. We have built out all these systems internally and that is our secret sauce,” he said.

Mensa sells its brands on both marketplaces as well as the brands’ own websites, but Narayanan said that entering new markets won’t be a cash-burning exercise.

“On Amazon, your reviews and ratings translate there. It gets carried forward in other markets as well,” he said. “The expenses of product development and selling online are all centralised in India.”

The company has three offices in India — in Bangalore, Gurugram and Mumbai.

Narayanan also expects acquisitions to get cheaper as funding dries up, especially in the rollup commerce space, which received record seed funding rounds in 2021.

While many companies started out with the same objective and similar funding rounds, ET reported on April 20, citing several industry trackers, that well-funded
houses of brands such as Mensa Brands and
Firstcry-backed Globalbees have cornered a substantial chunk of the funds and acquired a plethora of brands, leaving behind smaller players such as
Upscalio,
Goat,
10Club,
Powerhouse91, Evenflow and Bzaar.