Myntra Brand Guidelines: A 2007 Bengaluru Gift Shop, Flipkart & a 2021 Logo Change

Mugs and T-shirts before fashion.

Myntra began in Bengaluru in 2007, and it did not start as a fashion shop. English Wikipedia says it was founded by Mukesh Bansal, Ashutosh Lawania and Vineet Saxena to sell personalised gift items, working mainly business to business. Between 2007 and 2010 customers could have their own designs printed on T-shirts, mugs, mouse pads and similar goods.

The change of direction came in 2011, when, according to English Wikipedia, Myntra moved into fashion and lifestyle products and left personalisation behind. By 2012 it listed products from about 350 Indian and international brands. It also began buying technology teams: in April 2013 it acquired Fitiquette, a San Francisco company that had built a virtual fitting room, and in 2015 it bought Native5, a Bengaluru company founded in 2012 that built tools for developing mobile apps across platforms in the cloud, The Hindu reported in May 2015, adding that most of the Native5 team would join Myntra.

The decisive step was a merger with its cross-town rival. In May 2014 Flipkart bought Myntra in a share-swap deal, the Times of India reported on 23 May 2014. The paper said the deal had been shaped by two large shareholders the companies had in common, Tiger Global and Accel Partners, and that Mukesh Bansal would join Flipkart’s board and oversee its fashion business. Flipkart’s co-founder Sachin Bansal told the paper that fashion was “definitely the category of the future.” Bansal stressed that the two firms would stay apart: “We will retain the same management team at Myntra,” Bansal told the paper, adding that the idea was “to maintain distance between the two businesses.” English Wikipedia says Myntra went on operating as a standalone brand under Flipkart’s ownership, focused mainly on fashion.

App-only, then back.

Myntra’s most talked-about product decision came in 2015. English Wikipedia says that on 10 May 2015 the company announced it would close its website and serve customers only through its mobile app from 15 May, having already shut its mobile website. The experiment did not last. In February 2016 The Economic Times reported that Myntra was relaunching its mobile site, nine months after going app-only, to win back shoppers who did not want to download an app; the paper said the original move had been aimed at India’s young, phone-centred generation of shoppers, and a former official told it that “app-only was an extreme step.” At that point the company said it had no plans to bring back its desktop site.

The catalogue grew by acquisition as well. In July 2016 Flipkart bought the online fashion store Jabong, based in Gurgaon, through Myntra, Mint reported, from its owner Global Fashion Group, the group into which the German investor Rocket Internet had merged Jabong and four other online fashion retailers in September 2014; at the time Jabong offered more than 1,500 international high-street, sports, ethnic and designer labels. English Wikipedia adds smaller purchases, including the content app Cubeit in 2016, InLogg in 2017 and the wearables start-up Witworks in 2018, mostly to strengthen its technology teams.

Later products leaned on speed and on younger shoppers. In September 2019 Myntra launched an online talent show for fashion influencers, Myntra Fashion Superstar, English Wikipedia says. In December 2024 it moved into quick commerce with M-Now, a 30-minute delivery service for fashion, beauty and home products piloted in Bengaluru with about 10,000 styles, businessline reported. In December 2025 Business Today described two further strands: FWD, a trend-led section aimed at Gen Z shoppers, and Glamstream, a content-led shopping format.

Design and documentation.

This set of guides looks at Indian online retailers and specialty chains, from beauty and baby products to furniture, fashion and books. Most of them meet their customers first on a phone, so the material a design reader can study is the material the companies publish themselves: app screens, the artwork for seasonal sale campaigns, delivery boxes and mailers, and the interiors of the stores some of them have opened.

Several of these brands began online and later added shops. Nykaa, founded in Mumbai in 2012, opened its first store at Delhi airport in 2014, according to English Wikipedia; FirstCry, launched in Pune in 2010, opened its first store in Gujarat within months, a co-founder told Mint in 2024. Others in the set began with physical stores and added online sales later. Each guide notes which way a company grew, and when.

Platform names are described plainly. Many of these businesses trade under a short consumer name while a differently named company owns it: Nykaa is run by FSN E-Commerce Ventures and FirstCry by Brainbees Solutions. Where a brand sits inside a larger group, or was bought by one, the guide gives the owner and the date as the sources report them.

Each guide also draws on corporate pages and press reports on founders, owners and stock-market listings, with the dates those sources give. Store counts and other figures are given as of the date their source reports them. Colours and typefaces are an unofficial interpretation for design study; no logo, product photograph or app screen is reproduced.

A logo changed in 2021.

The most closely reported moment in Myntra’s visual identity is a change it made under public pressure. In December 2020 a complaint was filed with the Cyber Crime department of the Mumbai Police arguing that the company’s logo was offensive to women, Times Now reported on 31 January 2021. The police met company officials, who said the logo would be replaced within a month, and Myntra then changed its logo; the paper noted that online reaction was divided, with some welcoming the change and others treating it as a joke.

Leadership has passed through several hands since the Flipkart deal. English Wikipedia says Ananth Narayanan became chief executive in 2015. Business Today reported in December 2025 that Nandita Sinha had led Myntra since 2022, after nearly a decade at Flipkart. In April 2026 the Free Press Journal, citing Moneycontrol, reported that Sharon Pais, Myntra’s chief business officer and a former head of Flipkart Fashion, had been appointed head of Myntra from 13 April 2026.

Myntra has also faced regulatory scrutiny. In June 2026 businessline reported that the Enforcement Directorate had closed its investigation into Myntra Designs under the Foreign Exchange Management Act after the Reserve Bank of India issued a compounding order on 20 April 2026, a process that lets a company settle such contraventions by paying a penalty rather than facing prosecution. The same report described Myntra, founded in 2007, as part of the Flipkart Group, which is owned by Walmart.

For a design guide, Myntra shows how a brand can keep its own identity inside a larger group, and how a logo can change in response to public criticism. Compare Meesho, another Bengaluru marketplace, and Nykaa. For this guide we use mulberry, burnt marigold and blush with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Myntra’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.