India’s fastest unicorn, Mensa Brands has laid off 30 employees from India Lifestyle Network (ILN), an entity that Mensa acquired from Times Internet in December 2022.
Commenting on this development, a Mensa spokesperson said, “To enhance efficiency post integration, we restructured some teams that impacted a few positions. This activity affected less than 30 team members in ILN and there have been no layoffs in other parts of Mensa.” The company did not comment on ILN’s team size before layoffs, till the time of press.
The impacted employees are being offered up to three months salary, extended health insurance and support in finding new roles, the company spokesperson added.
Mensa Brands had acquired iDiva, MensXP and Hypp in 2022 to boost its brand building capabilities.
Mensa Brands was launched in April 2021 and has acquired 25 brands till date. In November 2021, Mensa became the fastest Indian start-up to achieve a unicorn (valuation of over $1 billion) valuation. Mensa Group recorded ₹310 crore revenue in FY22 and in the case of Mensa India, the revenue stood at ₹160 crore in FY22 and the company posted a loss of ₹19 crore in EBITDA, according to the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) filings.
The company also raised a ₹300 crore debt round from TradeCred in March 2023. In an earlier conversation, Ananth Narayanan, CEO of Mensa Brands told businessline that the company is now looking to acquire bigger brands with revenues in the range of ₹50 crore to ₹200 crore.