DaMENSCH Success Story: ₹118 Cr Men's Innerwear Brand

DaMENSCH's revenue from operations grew 34% to ₹118 crore in FY25, up from about ₹91.5 crore in FY24. Its net loss, though, barely moved: ₹57 crore in FY25, against ₹60 crore the year before. This is a seven-year-old Bengaluru brand that built its whole business on a category nobody thought was worth rebuilding, men's underwear, and turned it into a ₹600 crore valuation without ever fixing the one number that actually decides whether the company survives on its own terms.

Underwear, reconsidered.

I think that's the real story here. Not the ₹600 crore valuation. The fact that two IIT graduates looked at underwear and saw a business, while everyone else saw a commodity.

Know more about DaMENSCH's Founders and Team, Startup Story, Business Model, Funding and Investors, Growth, Challenges, Competitors, and Future Plans ahead!

DaMENSCH - Company Highlights

DaMENSCH - Founders and Team

Anurag Saboo and Gaurav Pushkar are both IIT Delhi graduates. Saboo joined Snapdeal as the e-commerce boom was peaking, then moved to the founding team at Nykaa, where he picked up product management and expansion experience he'd later apply to his own company. The two set out in 2018 to fix a category Indian menswear brands had largely ignored: innerwear, where fabric quality, fit and colour choices hadn't meaningfully changed in years.

The name is deliberate. DaMENSCH comes from the German word "Mensch," meaning a person of integrity, and the founders built the brand around the idea of the modern Indian man who cares about comfort and quality in the basics, not just the outerwear everyone else was building for.

DaMENSCH - Startup Story

DaMENSCH launched with modal-fabric innerwear at an accessible price, a fabric choice that was common in premium global brands but largely absent from Indian menswear at that price point. The early response validated the bet: customers who'd never thought about the fabric of their underwear started asking for more of it.

From there the company expanded fast into adjacent comfortwear categories, growing to more than 250 SKUs across roughly 25 sub-categories. Two product lines became genuine differentiators rather than line extensions: Deo-Soft, an odour-cancelling underwear line the brand claims was India's first, and Neo-Skin, a thermo-regulating vest range. Both are attempts to make "basics" a place where a D2C brand can still win on innovation, not just marketing.

DaMENSCH - Business Model

DaMENSCH sells primarily direct-to-consumer through its own website, alongside listings on Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, Nykaa Fashion, Tata Cliq and Snapdeal. It occupies the premium end of the men's comfortwear market, priced above mass-market basics but positioned similarly to brands like Calvin Klein on fabric and fit, rather than competing purely on price.

Offline, DaMENSCH has stayed deliberately small: three stores, all in Bengaluru, at Mantri Square Mall, Jayanagar and Brigade Road, with a fourth planned for Commercial Street. That's a far more cautious retail footprint than peers like other D2C brands opening physical stores across multiple cities at once, and it suggests DaMENSCH is testing the offline format city by city before committing capital to a national rollout.

DaMENSCH - Funding and Investors

DaMENSCH has raised over $28 million to date, backed by Matrix Partners India in its early rounds and A91 Partners more recently. In May 2024, it raised ₹21.62 crore in an extended Series B from existing investors. In 2026, it raised a further ₹17.40 crore from A91 Partners and new investor Tancom Electronics, at a flat valuation of ₹600 crore.

A flat valuation round, rather than a step up, is a quieter signal than a splashy new price tag: it usually means existing backers are still willing to fund growth, but nobody is yet willing to pay more for the next share, which tracks with a company still posting ₹57 crore in annual losses.

DaMENSCH - Growth

Revenue has scaled steadily: about ₹60 crore in FY22, roughly ₹91.5 crore in FY24, and ₹118 crore in FY25. But the losses haven't shrunk in step. A ₹57 crore loss on ₹118 crore of revenue means DaMENSCH is still spending close to double what it earns to keep growing, a ratio that hasn't improved much from FY24's ₹60 crore loss on the smaller revenue base.

DaMENSCH - Challenges

The core challenge is one every premium D2C apparel brand in India eventually hits: customer acquisition and retention costs stay high in a category where switching brands is easy and price-sensitive competitors undercut on the same fabric claims within a year. DaMENSCH's losses barely narrowing between FY24 and FY25, even as revenue grew 34%, is the clearest sign that growth alone isn't solving the underlying cost structure.

The other challenge is category crowding. When DaMENSCH started in 2018, modal-fabric men's innerwear at an accessible price was genuinely differentiated. By FY25, XYXX had scaled past it in revenue, and menswear-adjacent D2C brands were adding innerwear as a side category rather than a core one, which means the gap DaMENSCH found in 2018 has mostly closed.

DaMENSCH - Competitors

DaMENSCH's closest rivals are XYXX and Bummer, both D2C men's innerwear brands built on the same modal-comfort pitch. XYXX has pulled ahead on scale, with FY25 revenue of ₹187 crore against DaMENSCH's ₹118 crore, while Bummer remains a smaller, earlier-stage player at around ₹11 crore. DaMENSCH sits closer to the premium end alongside international names like Calvin Klein than to either of its Indian D2C peers.

DaMENSCH - Future Plans

DaMENSCH's near-term priority looks like narrowing the gap between revenue growth and losses rather than chasing scale for its own sake. The 2026 funding round at a flat valuation buys it more time to do that without needing to prove a step-up in value to new investors yet. A slow, city-by-city offline rollout, rather than a rapid multi-city land grab, fits the same cautious posture.

Conclusion

A category nobody wanted to build in.

DaMENSCH proved men's innerwear could carry a real brand, real margins in theory, and real venture money. What it hasn't yet proved is that the category can carry a profitable business at scale, and after seven years and $28 million raised, that's the question its next round will actually answer.

FAQs

Who founded DaMENSCH?

DaMENSCH was founded in 2018 by Anurag Saboo and Gaurav Pushkar, both IIT Delhi graduates who previously worked at Snapdeal and Nykaa.

What is DaMENSCH's revenue?

DaMENSCH's revenue from operations grew 34% to ₹118 crore in FY25, up from about ₹91.5 crore in FY24. The company posted a net loss of ₹57 crore in FY25.

How much funding has DaMENSCH raised?

DaMENSCH has raised more than $28 million to date, including a ₹21.62 crore Series B extension in May 2024 and a ₹17.40 crore round in 2026 at a flat valuation of ₹600 crore, backed by A91 Partners, Matrix Partners India and Tancom Electronics.