The Background
Bansal had garnered around a decade of experience from his stints at different companies during the years 1997 to 2006. Working in Silicon Valley during the dotcom boom in 1999, he had witnessed the hyper growth of startup companies. In hindsight, his short tenure at various companies, where he worked across varied domains like consulting, development, and product management, suggested that he had the knack for strategy and product building - the necessary skills of an entrepreneur.
The Spark
At the time, a common theme across e-commerce players in India was to sell a product directly from either a vendor or a manufacturer to the end user. Thus users could go online and buy what they see, but could not customize according to their own likes. Bansal, along with his batch mates, Ashutosh Lawania and Vineet Saxena, wanted to capitalize on the personalisation space, and came up with an idea to build a platform where a user could personalise and buy a gifting product.
The Launch
Myntra was launched in the year 2007, with a focus to enable users to personalise simple products like mouse pads, T-shits, calendars and many more products.