DaMENSCH crossed ₹118 crore in operating revenue in FY25, growing about 34% in a men’s innerwear category that most Indian brands had left untouched for more than a decade. It has also lost money in every year it has existed, and in September 2026 it accepted fresh capital at a flat ₹600 crore valuation — the same price investors had put on it years earlier.
That tension sits at the centre of the DaMENSCH story: a genuinely well-liked product, real revenue growth, and a founding team that came out of Nykaa and Snapdeal — set against losses that have run larger than revenue, an expense base that still outstrips sales, and a market ruled by a company many times its size. This is a deep dive into how a premium basics brand got built, what the numbers actually say, and why the next stretch is the hard part.
Quick facts
| Company | DaMENSCH (legal entity: Damensch Apparel Private Limited, CIN U74995KA2018PTC150647, ROC Bangalore) |
| Founded | Incorporated 3 May 2018, Bengaluru |
| Founder(s) | Anurag Saboo (co-founder and CEO) and Gaurav Pushkar (co-founder), IIT Delhi batchmates |
| Businesses | Direct-to-consumer men’s essentials — innerwear, loungewear and casualwear, sold via own site, marketplaces and offline stores |
| Latest FY revenue | FY25 operating revenue of ₹118 crore (Entrackr) to ₹120.8 crore (Inc42), up roughly 32–34% year on year |
| Latest FY profit/loss | FY25 net loss of about ₹57 crore (Entrackr; ₹57.2 crore per Inc42) |
| Listed | Private |
| Last valuation | ₹600 crore (about $63.5 million), reported flat, in a round completed in September 2026 |
| Key shareholders | A91 Partners 22.45%; Matrix Partners 12.76%; Saama Capital 11.14%; Whiteboard Capital 9.61%; each co-founder 10.87% (as reported) |
What they do
DaMENSCH is a direct-to-consumer men’s apparel brand built around everyday essentials rather than occasion wear. It sells premium innerwear — briefs, trunks and vests cut from softer, moisture-managing fabrics such as MicroModal — alongside loungewear, t-shirts and casual bottoms. The brand’s pitch is that the “boring” categories men buy on repeat had been ignored on quality, fit and fabric for years, and that a design-led premium product could take share at a higher price point.
- Core categories: men’s innerwear (the entry product), plus loungewear, casual t-shirts, joggers and everyday basics.
- Signature product cue: skin-tone-matched vests, launched in multiple tones rather than only white, which the company says became one of its best-rated early products.
- Sales channels: its own website (damensch.com), marketplaces including Amazon, Flipkart and Myntra, plus a growing offline footprint of exclusive stores and multi-brand outlets.
- Positioning: premium mass — priced above commodity innerwear, below luxury, targeting urban men aged roughly 22–40.
The origin
Anurag Saboo and Gaurav Pushkar met at IIT Delhi, graduating in 2012, and worked together early on at Snapdeal. Saboo then spent about four years at Nykaa as part of its early team, working across product and business expansion during the years Nykaa scaled toward its own listing. That grounding in consumer internet and category building shaped what came next.
The founding insight was narrow and specific. India’s essential-wear market, the founders argued, had gone stagnant: while shoppers abroad were exposed to new materials, better stitching and improved fits, men’s innerwear in India had barely changed in fifteen years, dominated by a handful of legacy names competing largely on price and distribution. DaMENSCH set out to treat innerwear as a considered, design-led purchase — better fabric, honest fit, a cleaner buying experience online — and to start with the least glamorous product in the wardrobe precisely because no one else was investing there. The company was incorporated as Damensch Apparel Private Limited on 3 May 2018 and built its first audience online before it ever touched a shelf.
The struggle years
DaMENSCH has never reported an annual profit. Building a premium brand from scratch meant spending heavily on fabric development, product returns, marketing and customer acquisition long before the revenue caught up — and the gap has stayed wide.
- FY24 losses ran larger than sales: a net loss of about ₹60 crore against operating revenue of ₹91.5 crore (Inc42, Entrackr).
- In FY25 the expense base was still 1.51 times operating revenue — total expenses of about ₹178 crore against ₹118 crore of revenue (Entrackr).
- The valuation stalled. The round completed in September 2026 came in flat at ₹600 crore, meaning investors paid the same price as in an earlier round rather than marking the company up (Entrepreneur India).
- The competitive setting is brutal: incumbent Page Industries (which runs Jockey in India) is a listed giant many times DaMENSCH’s size, and D2C rival XYXX has scaled alongside it, keeping marketing costs high for everyone.
None of this is a near-death in the classic sense — the company kept raising and kept growing — but it is the harder, quieter struggle of a consumer brand that has to keep proving the unit economics work before the capital runs thin.
The turning point
The clearest inflection came in 2021–2022, when DaMENSCH went from a promising DTC innerwear label to a funded, multi-category essentials brand. The company said it crossed ₹100 crore in annualised revenue run-rate in 2021 — a milestone it described as reaching faster than any other D2C apparel brand in India (company-stated, so treat with caution). On the back of that momentum it closed a ₹122.5 crore (about $16.4 million) Series B in February 2022, led by A91 Partners.
The numbers on either side of that leap tell the story. Before it, DaMENSCH was a single-category online brand raising tens of crores. After it, revenue climbed from ₹77.6 crore in FY23 to ₹91.5 crore in FY24 and on to ₹118 crore in FY25, and the company opened its first physical store in October 2022 at Mantri Square Mall in Bengaluru — the start of an omnichannel push aimed at a stated ₹500 crore revenue target by FY26. The bet had shifted from “can premium innerwear sell online” to “can this become a full essentials brand across channels.”
The money behind it
DaMENSCH has raised over $28 million (roughly ₹230 crore-plus) across seed, Series A, Series B and follow-on rounds. The cap table is concentrated among a small set of consumer-focused funds.
- Series A — about ₹50 crore, late 2020: led by Matrix Partners India (now Z47), with Saama Capital and Whiteboard Capital, plus venture debt from Alteria Capital (Inc42, SiliconIndia).
- Series B — ₹122.5 crore / $16.4 million, February 2022: led by A91 Partners, with existing backers Saama, Matrix and Whiteboard participating (Inc42, company blog).
- Series B extension — about ₹22 crore (₹21.62 crore): from existing investors, to extend runway (Startup Story, Inc42).
- Flat round — ₹17.40 crore, September 2026: A91 Partners put in ₹15 crore and new backer Tancom Electronics ₹2.40 crore, at an unchanged ₹600 crore (about $63.5 million) valuation (Entrepreneur India).
What each backer changed: Matrix/Z47 provided the early institutional validation and category conviction that let DaMENSCH move beyond innerwear; A91 Partners, a fund known for backing consumer brands, anchored the growth-stage Series B and has kept doubling down as the largest shareholder at a reported 22.45%. The flat 2026 round, small and led by insiders, reads less as an endorsement of a higher price and more as runway to keep the growth story going.
How it makes money
DaMENSCH earns the way most premium D2C apparel brands do: it designs and sources product, sells it at a markup across channels, and lives or dies on whether the gross margin left after discounts, returns and marketing covers everything else.
- Money in: product sales across its own website, third-party marketplaces (Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra) and offline stores. The founders have said more than half of sales historically came direct through the website, which carries better margins than marketplaces.
- Costs out (FY25): raw materials and manufacturing of about ₹69.5 crore, employee benefits of about ₹29 crore, and advertising of about ₹27.5 crore — advertising alone equal to roughly a quarter of operating revenue (Entrackr).
- Where the margin sits: in the gross spread on premium fabrics and the mix shift toward direct and offline sales, offset by high customer-acquisition and marketing costs typical of D2C.
- The part people get wrong: revenue growth alone is not the point. With total FY25 expenses at 1.51x operating revenue, the model only works if marketing efficiency and repeat purchase improve as the brand matures — scale has to lower the cost of the next rupee of sales.
The numbers
Revenue has grown steadily; losses have narrowed only slightly and still dwarf profitability. Figures below are operating revenue and net loss, in ₹ crore. Note the FY25 revenue difference between sources — Entrackr reports ₹118 crore, Inc42 ₹120.8 crore — which reflects small differences in how each classifies operating income.
| Fiscal year | Operating revenue (₹ crore) | Net loss (₹ crore) |
| FY23 | 77.6 | Not separately confirmed here |
| FY24 | 91.5 | ~60 |
| FY25 | 118 (Entrackr) / 120.8 (Inc42) | ~57 (57.2 per Inc42) |
- FY23 to FY24 revenue growth: about 17.9% (from ₹77.6 crore to ₹91.5 crore).
- FY24 to FY25 revenue growth: about 32–34%, depending on source.
- FY25 total expenses: about ₹178 crore; expense-to-operating-revenue ratio of 1.51 (Entrackr).
- Losses moved the right way — from about ₹60 crore in FY24 to about ₹57 crore in FY25 — but remain close to half of revenue.
Where the money comes from
DaMENSCH’s revenue splits across product categories and sales channels, and the channel mix is where the interesting shift is happening.
- By product: innerwear remains the anchor category, with loungewear and casualwear added to raise average order value and repeat rates.
- By channel — the surprise: DaMENSCH started as an online-first brand, but its growth bet is increasingly offline. It opened its first store in October 2022 and has been expanding into exclusive brand outlets across Bengaluru, Delhi NCR and Mumbai plus 400-plus multi-brand outlets, chasing a stated ₹500 crore revenue target by FY26 (Indian Retailer, Fibre2Fashion).
- Direct vs marketplace: the company has said a majority of sales came through its own website, which protects margin versus selling primarily through marketplaces that charge commissions — FY25 commission expenses were in the ₹14–18 crore range (Entrackr).
The takeaway from the mix: a brand that made its name online is now spending to win physical shelf space, betting that offline discovery and trial lift a category — innerwear — that many shoppers still prefer to buy in person.
The risks
- Structural losses and cash burn. With FY25 expenses at 1.51x operating revenue and a net loss near ₹57 crore, DaMENSCH depends on external capital to fund growth. If marketing efficiency and repeat purchase do not improve fast enough, each fundraise buys less runway — and the September 2026 round was small and flat, not a mark-up.
- A flat valuation signals investor caution. Raising ₹17.40 crore at an unchanged ₹600 crore valuation, largely from insiders, suggests it is harder to attract fresh growth capital at a higher price. That raises the pressure to show a credible path to profitability before the next round.
- An overwhelming incumbent and a crowded challenger set. Page Industries, which runs Jockey in India, is a listed company vastly larger than DaMENSCH and defines the premium innerwear market; D2C peers such as XYXX are scaling in the same categories. Competing on brand and product against that field keeps advertising spend high — about ₹27.5 crore, or roughly a quarter of FY25 revenue.
- Offline expansion is capital-intensive. Exclusive stores and multi-brand distribution add fixed costs, inventory risk and working-capital needs that pure online selling avoids. Hitting a ₹500 crore ambition through physical retail requires execution that many D2C brands have found expensive.
The takeaway
DaMENSCH is a clean case study in the limits of the “premium the boring category” playbook. Picking innerwear — dull, high-frequency, under-innovated — was smart: it gave the brand a defensible wedge and a reason to exist. Growing revenue from ₹77.6 crore to ₹118 crore in two years shows the product resonates. But a good product and rising revenue are not the same as a good business, and the flat ₹600 crore valuation is the market’s honest verdict: it wants to see the losses close, not just the top line grow. The transferable lesson is that in consumer brands, the hard mile is not the first ₹100 crore of revenue — it is the point where growth has to start paying for itself.
Frequently asked questions
What does DaMENSCH sell?
DaMENSCH is a direct-to-consumer men’s essentials brand. It sells premium innerwear such as briefs, trunks and vests in fabrics like MicroModal, alongside loungewear, t-shirts and casual basics, through its own website, marketplaces and a growing set of physical stores.
Who founded DaMENSCH and when?
It was founded by IIT Delhi batchmates Anurag Saboo (co-founder and CEO) and Gaurav Pushkar. The legal entity, Damensch Apparel Private Limited, was incorporated on 3 May 2018 in Bengaluru. Saboo previously worked at Snapdeal and was part of Nykaa’s early team.
Is DaMENSCH profitable?
No. DaMENSCH has reported losses every year. In FY25 it posted a net loss of about ₹57 crore on operating revenue of roughly ₹118 crore, with total expenses around ₹178 crore, per Entrackr. Losses narrowed only slightly from about ₹60 crore in FY24.
How much funding has DaMENSCH raised and at what valuation?
DaMENSCH has raised over $28 million to date, including a ₹122.5 crore ($16.4 million) Series B led by A91 Partners in February 2022. Its most recent round, completed in September 2026, was ₹17.40 crore at a flat valuation of ₹600 crore (about $63.5 million), per Entrepreneur India.
Who are DaMENSCH’s biggest competitors?
Its largest competitor is Page Industries, which operates Jockey in India and is far bigger and listed. Among newer D2C brands, XYXX competes closely in men’s innerwear and casualwear.
Sources
Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).
- Entrackr — D2C innerwear brands XYXX, DaMENSCH scale up in FY25 (September 2026)
- Inc42 — DaMENSCH company financials page (September 2026)
- Entrepreneur India — DaMENSCH raises INR 17.40 Cr at flat valuation of INR 600 Cr (September 2026)
- Inc42 — Men’s Innerwear Brand DaMENSCH Raises INR 50 Cr From Matrix Partners, Others (2020)
- Inc42 / DaMENSCH company blog — DaMENSCH raises INR 122.5 crore ($16.4 Mn) Series B led by A91 Partners (February 2022)
- Startup Story — DaMENSCH secures INR 21.62 Cr Series B extension (2023)
- Z47 (formerly Matrix Partners India) — DaMENSCH founding story and product interview (November 2021)
- Startuppedia — Meet the IIT Delhi duo behind DaMENSCH (FY24 revenue ₹91 crore)
- Indian Retailer / Fibre2Fashion — DaMENSCH offline expansion and ₹500 crore FY26 target
- Tracxn / RegisterKaro — Damensch Apparel Private Limited legal entity, CIN U74995KA2018PTC150647, ROC Bangalore
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