Ananth Narayanan
Founder and CEO, Mensa Brands · 1 appearance on the record.
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founderexecutiveinvestorLinkedIn ↗mensabrands.com ↗
He founded Mensa Brands in 2021, creating a tech-led house of brands that became a unicorn startup. He previously spent 15 years at McKinsey & Company, served as CEO of Myntra and Jabong, and led Medlife as co-founder and CEO until its acquisition by PharmEasy.
35statements → 13claims → 7claims resolved → 86%fully supported → 3.66/5average certainty → 2.11/5average debate potential → ≈4.0/5argument clarity, estimated →
6 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted 6 not checkable as stated how the 13 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
3 predictions · 10 assertions · 4 opinions · 18 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 13 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 7 are resolved, and 6 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.
The record, in short
What the tape says about how Ananth argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.
Expressed certainty vs assessment result
weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet
How they sound: not measured why? →
We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Ananth Narayanan on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.
Everything Ananth Narayanan said on WTF is with Nikhil Kamath that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
Narayanan: Myntra ad experiments showed higher click-through rates for fair-skinned models
“And we ran an experiment where you actually look at click through rates long time ago, and you find that the click through rates are actually different. So purely economically, the click through rates on performance marketing were higher.”
Narayanan: Target Revenue Multiples Are 5x in Fashion and 6x-7x in Beauty
“My sense is, I think a five X would be interesting. Five X on fashion would be interesting beauty. I think between four and six, no, actually maybe six, seven. I think. Food will be probably lower. Will be three, four.”
Narayanan: In-content click-to-buy video commerce will remain a tiny percentage of sales
“I mean, you know, never say never, but my sense is, I think that will still be a very small percent because I think human beings are still human beings, right? But now or later, and I think, by the way, if you're watching something on content, right, you're tr…”
Narayanan: Consumers will almost never pay a price premium for sustainable products
“Will somebody pay premium for it because it costs more to get to be sustainable? The answer is almost always no. If the answer to that is no, there's no economic model. So I think should one do it and be responsible? The answer is yes. Is it a selling factor f…”
Narayanan: ONDC adds value to brands but will not replace platforms
“I do think ONDC can add value to brands.
I'm not sure there are replacement to platforms.”
Narayanan: Private brands grew to 30% of sales, driving Myntra's profitability
“And the private brand business of Myntra at the same time also went from seven, eight percent to call it almost 30%, which is what drove profitability. So we were among the most profitable pieces of the Flipkart ecosystem, not amongst, we were the most profita…”
Ananth Narayanan: Instagram Shopping has not taken off in any meaningful way globally
“Insta shopping hasn't really taken off globally, right? In any meaningful manner. I mean, at the Instagram level, I'm saying.”
Narayanan: Ideal 0-20 crore revenue mix is 80% marketplaces, 20% D2C
“I think from the zero to 20 crores, if you can keep an 80 20%, where 80% is e-commerce platforms, and 20% is DTC, it's a great mix. Because then you have enough consumer data, but you also have reach, right, that you can actually get to.”
Narayanan: Focusing 100% on D2C Early Causes Brands to Bleed Cash
“If you focus a hundred percent on DTC, for example, I think you can represent the brand, but you'll end up bleeding money, which means by the way, you'll have to raise money much sooner.”
Narayanan: Scaling on Myntra requires frequent drops to trigger freshness algorithms
“Myntra values freshness. Fresh stock. So new styles coming on all the time. Therefore, if you want to make Myntra your primary platform, you basically have to introduce more frequent drops and you have to get tagged to what's new.”
Narayanan: Scaling brands to 500 crores requires offline retail and organic pull
“A hundred and above to 500, you have to figure out how to make offline work, which is a different skill set for a lot of people who have started it this way. You have to figure out and really make sure that the product goes from push to pull.”
Narayanan: Performance-driven sales must drop to 30% beyond 100 crores revenue
“That percent from 20 to a hundred, maybe call it fifty-fifty performance and organic. Hundred plus that performance based sales should come down to 30%. Because if it doesn't, 30, 40%, it doesn't, it just, the cost of it keeps going up and up and up and up and…”
Narayanan: Legacy FMCG giants have caught up digitally, hurting D2C startups
“If you asked me three, four years ago, I would say most of the big players were not digitally very good. So you could actually still create some scale online and then figure out a way to see if that was enough. I don't think that's true anymore. I think all of…”
Narayanan: E-commerce algorithms reward brand catalog width over inventory depth
“In general, online values width more than depth. The reason is purely algorithmic. What happens is you have 600,000 SKUs in a Myntra. Number of SKUs that are tagged to a same brand name is one weightage in an algorithm that basically then says you're a large b…”
Narayanan: Machine learning adds 2 to 4 percentage points to fashion margins
“Is it possible to use machine learning to reduce inventory and reduce wastage? The answer is absolutely. And I think it's differentiated enough that if you build this as a real capability, you know, you get two, three, four percentage points more. That I think…”
Narayanan: E-commerce purchase volumes drop precipitously above 5,000 rupees
“It is true that beyond 5000,
The volumes drop precipitously.”
Narayanan: Premium sneaker brands priced above 20,000 rupees should launch offline
“I would not do it. I mean, I would not do it.
You go offline.”
Narayanan: 60% of the Indian Fashion Market Remains Unorganized
“I would say by the way, 60% is still disorganized, right? I think ready to stitch is still a very large segment. Most of ethnic, which is a very large portion of fashion is still unorganized.”
Narayanan: Branded Retail in India Is Growing 2x to 3x Faster Than GDP
“The overall market is growing a little bit over GDP. Branded is growing two, three X faster because unbranded to branded is happening. And online, by the way, will grow faster.”
Narayanan: Launch new products where high marketplace search volumes yield no results
“And that's a very good way to sort of figure out where are the null sets. So what people look for is where are people searching and not finding anything? And that's what you start launching, right?”
Narayanan: New brands should dominate small niches rather than fight incumbents
“If you start something new, my sense is, I think, being a shark in a pond, Is always better than doing something else. I don't know whether that's distribution or a niche, right? If you want to launch an ethnic, I wouldn't go against the big guys.”
Narayanan: India's market for quiet luxury remains very small
“My sense is I think the market in India for, I think we're not yet evolved to a stage of restrained capitalism where you don't want to actually demonstrate that you bought something expensive. I think that market is very, very, very small.”
Narayanan: Only the first six screen swipes matter in mobile e-commerce
“In the online world, the first six swipes on a mobile phone are the only thing that matter. After that, by the way, your attention span, you know, you never get reach, right?”
Ananth Narayanan: Securing initial 100 reviews is critical for Amazon ranking
“Amazon values consumer reviews and ratings. Yeah. So getting the first hundred reviews and ratings, right. Through customers, through friends, through family, or legitimately, there's an Amazon wine program that you can do. All of that actually matters the mos…”
Appearances (1)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| Ep #11 | WTF Goes into Building a Fashion, Beauty, or Home Brand? Nikhil w/ Kishore, Raj, | Oct 7, 2023 | 1h 1m |