How Myntra's leadership gamble led to an eight-fold jump in its sales

CEO Ananth Narayanan has grown the fashion retailer's GMV eight times in three years

When talks began to let Mukesh Bansal take up a bigger role in Flipkart, the company that had acquired his online fashion firm Myntra for around $300 million in 2014, a call was made to look outside the two firms for a new CEO. 

It was a bold move because very few of India’s successful Internet companies back then had leaders who were not founders as it was believed few outsiders really understood the business.

The outsider that landed the job in July 2015 and who assumed office in October that year was Ananth Narayanan, a veteran analyst from McKinsey,