We're building brands from India, for the world

Ananth Narayanan, chief executive of BRND.ME, formerly Mensa Brands, tells Nabodita Ganguly in an email interview why emerging markets are positioned to lead the next wave of aspirational brands. Edited excerpts

- Nabodita Ganguly

What are the strategic changes BRND.ME has made over the past couple of years? Why did you rebrand?

Since our inception four years ago, we've evolved from a broad-based house of brands into a focused platform, building global, profitable, digital-first consumer brands. BRND. ME is not a pivot, but a sharper expression of this vision.

The rebrand solves a functional need, we needed a single brand identity with trademark clearance across all operating categories globally. BRND is 'brand', the 'dot' signals 'digital' and ME stands for 'consumer'. As an aside, the 'M' is similar to our earlier Mensa logo and brings familiarity.

We've always been excited about creating brands from India for the world. Today, half our revenue comes from outside India, with active expansion into Canada, the UK, Germany and the UAE.

What were the challenges as a house of brands focusing on India across multiple categories?

When we started, the ambition was to test and scale multiple white spaces in the Indian consumer landscape. The house-of-brands model gave us speed, category access and operating leverage early on. In the first 18 months, we onboarded over 20 brands across fashion, wellness, beauty, home and even content-led commerce.

As we matured, it became clear that not all categories aligned with our strengths or long-term margin thesis. The categories delivering strong product-market fit, high repeat rates and contribution to margin expansion were health, wellness and lifestyle. That insight led us to shift from breadth to depth.