House of brands platform Mensa Brands has recently laid off approximately 30 employees from India Lifestyle Network (ILN), which it acquired in December of last year.
A spokesperson from Mensa Brands confirmed the layoffs, stating, “ILN is committed to providing the best content to its consumers and industry-leading services to its client partners. To enhance efficiency post integration, we restructured some teams that impacted a few positions. This activity affected less than 30 team members in ILN.”
The spokesperson further added, “We are fully dedicated to supporting those affected by providing each of them up to three months’ salary, extended health insurance, and support in finding new roles.”
Initially, Moneycontrol reported the mass firing at Mensa Brands, suggesting that around 200 employees were affected. However, the Mensa Brands spokesperson denied the report, stating that there were no other layoffs apart from those at ILN.
According to sources familiar with the matter, the layoffs were spread across different divisions, with ILN being the most impacted.
As per the Moneycontrol report, ILN employees were informed about the layoffs in individual meetings with human resource executives and were asked to leave the following day.
While some employees received two months’ pay as compensation, others were only given one month’s salary and were asked to leave immediately. It was alleged that the employees’ personal performance suddenly became unsatisfactory for Mensa Brands, which admitted that ILN’s growth had been lackluster.
Founded in 2021 by former Myntra CEO Ananth Narayanan, Mensa Brands specializes in acquiring digital-first startups and assisting them in scaling their operations. The acquisition of ILN, the parent company of MensXP, iDiva, and Hypp, further strengthened its brand-building capabilities.
Mensa Brands is supported by prominent investors such as Prosus, Tiger Global, Accel Partners, Alpha Wave, and CRED’s Kunal Shah. With over 700 employees, the company is currently in an aggressive hiring phase.
In its first full year of operation in FY22, Mensa Brands reported a net loss of INR 96.62 Cr and operating revenue of INR 186.15 Cr.
