Nandita Sinha: How Myntra CEO Nandita Sinha is charting a style reset

In the cult classic 3 Idiots, Aamir Khan delivers a line that has stayed with an entire generation: “Excellence ka peecha karo, success jhak marke tumhare peeche aayegi” (Strive for excellence and success will come searching for you). For Nandita Sinha, CEO of Myntra, that wasn’t just cinematic wisdom—it became the backbone of her professional journey.

Growing up in Lucknow, Sinha says ambition was stitched into her upbringing. “When I was growing up, it was with a very different kind of privilege—not material privilege, but the privilege of having parents who were very ambitious for me and who really saw the potential in me. They pushed me towards excellence,” she tells BT.

Her career began in 2004 as an intern at Unilever, a stint that sparked her interest in consumer behaviour and brand-building. An MBA from the Faculty of Management Studies (FMS), Delhi, followed—after which her path spanned some of the country’s largest consumer-facing companies. From Britannia to Flipkart, and now Myntra, Sinha has navigated diverse categories and challenges. Along that journey, she even took an entrepreneurial plunge with MyBabyCart.com, an end-to-end e-commerce platform for baby products. The experience, she says, provided a closer understanding of the agility required in early-stage ventures.

The near decade-long stint at Flipkart was foundational. “Flipkart was a great learning ground,” she recalls. There, she set up and scaled up several categories—beauty and personal care, baby and kids, furniture and home. Later, she transitioned into overseeing customer growth and marketing. She also led the Big Billion Days playbook, one of India’s largest festive-sale offerings.

By the time she took charge at Myntra in 2022, Sinha was ready for a panoramic leadership role.

One of Sinha’s defining milestones in the last two years has been Myntra’s financial turnaround. The fashion marketplace, which reported a loss of `781 crore in FY23, swung to profitability the very next year. According to Tracxn, Myntra posted a `51 crore profit in FY24, followed by a near 1,000% jump in FY25 with a profit of `551 crore, a rare turnaround story in Indian e-commerce.

How did she do it?

“The first few months were spent understanding the organisation, the category, the business, and the opportunity,” she says. From there, Myntra sharpened its north star: to become the fashion destination for 100 million Indians and to reshape the ecosystem.

Sinha built Myntra’s revival strategy on five core pillars. The first was differential selection, focusing on international labels, premium brands and fast-growing D2C players. The second was speed, with the launch of Myntra Express and later Myntra Now, enabling 30–60-minute deliveries. The third was luxury, aimed at capturing the rising cohort of consumers upgrading their lifestyle choices. The fourth was a sharp focus on Gen Z; Sinha calls them “a huge engine of growth.” For them, Myntra built FWD, an AI-led, trend-first destination introducing nearly 8,000 new styles every week, supported by Glamstream, a content-driven shopping experience. The fifth and most transformative one was tech-led disruption. “The idea is to disrupt ourselves to build for the new-age customer who is evolving much faster than most platforms,” says Sinha.

Despite the relentless pace of work, Sinha finds grounding in her personal life. “I spend time with my family—my husband and my 14-and-a-half-year-old son. We travel as a family, and I love reading,” she says.

Her message to India’s young professionals is simple but firm: dream big and put in the work. “There is no escaping hard work and excellence. Build a support system around you—true cheerleaders who see your potential even when you don’t,” she says.

@PalakAgarwal64