Brnd.me’s (formerly Mensa Brands) founder and chief executive, Ananth Narayanan, often repeats a line in interviews. “We want to become a digital-first Unilever.”

Like muscle memory, he said it again minutes into a call with The Ken.

Narayanan doesn’t mean to literally become another Unilever, but build something similar, at least in structure. “Our vision is to build five to 10 large $150 million consumer brands that are each profitable and scalable, along with a tech backbone,” he said.

But that wasn’t the idea when Mensa launched in 2021. “We wanted........

© The Ken