Mukesh Bansal is the founder and chief executive of Myntra, India’s largest fasion e-commerce site, which was acquired, in 2014, for $375 million by Flipkart, the country’s equivalent to Amazon.
Before founding Myntra, Bansal spent eight years in Silicon Valley, first as a software engineer, then as a product manager. “I got there in 1999, which was pretty much at the peak of the whole ‘dotcom’ boom, and I was excited and energised by the power of the Internet and the potential to reshape businesses,” he said.
Armed with the important lessons drawn from his time in the Bay Area, Bansal returned to Bangalore, a growing tech hub in his native India, to launch Myntra, in 2006, as a product personalisation platform. But Bansal could see that the company was “running into the ceiling.” So he took a risk and pivoted the company into fashion e-commerce.
By investing heavily in technology, embracing an open SiliconValley-style culture and making several successful strategic bets, Bansal built Myntra into the country’s largest online fashion player.
After selling Myntra to Flipkart, Bansal founded CureFit, a health and wellness start-up established with former Flipkart executive Ankit Nagori. The company, which has secured $170 million to date, has plans to aggressively scale with potential funding of $75 million in a round led by Accel Growth and Chiratae Ventures, as well as an incubator programme for entrepreneurs looking to enter the healthy food market.
