There is a version of Minu Margeret‘s story that writes itself easily — MBA from the Indian School of Business, career stops at Goldman Sachs, Unilever, Wipro, and PhonePe, then founder of a fast-growing women’s activewear brand. The trajectory of the high-achiever who spots a market gap and fills it. Neat. Predictable. And almost entirely beside the point.
The real story starts with the frustration that followed her for years. A national-level Ultimate Frisbee player, Margeret could not find activewear in India that worked for her body. Clothes comfortable enough to sit in came apart under movement. Those that stretched felt plasticky, or compressed so aggressively they left marks. For someone in genuine athletic contexts every day, this wasn’t a minor problem — it was a category-wide failure. And it wasn’t hers alone. Women account for 56.8 percent of India’s activewear market (Grand View Research, 2025), yet the products available were largely designed by and for men, then resized for women as an afterthought.
When the pandemic locked everything down in March 2020, Margeret made a decision that would define BlissClub for years to come. She didn’t build a product first. She built a room.
The room before the product
Through Instagram and WhatsApp groups, Margeret gathered women who shared the same frustrations with fitness and ill-fitting activewear. She ran online yoga sessions, organised a 21-day movement challenge, and hosted what became one of the largest women-only virtual yoga events in India. Months before anything went on sale, she had a community. Months before any product existed, she had a brief — written by the women who would eventually wear it.
Most D2C brands treat the community as downstream of the product. Margeret reversed it. By the time The Ultimate Leggings launched in December 2020, the community had already decided what they would contain: pockets deep enough for a phone and keys, extended sizing, and fabric that moved without fighting back. “We worked with the community to build the products,” she has said. “It is the community that has built these products.”
The problem with pitching women’s problems to a male-dominated room
India’s investment ecosystem was — and largely remains — dominated by men. Margeret has described the additional burden this created clearly: she wasn’t just pitching a brand, she was first required to establish that the problem was real. Indian women were genuinely frustrated with activewear. That the market was large enough to matter. That this was worth a cheque.
She got through it. BlissClub raised $18 million in a Series A round led by Eight Roads Ventures and Elevation Capital, with angel participation from Swiggy CEO Sriharsha Majety, Mamaearth co-founder Ghazal Alagh, former Myntra CEO Amar Nagaram, CRED founder Kunal Shah, ex-WhatsApp CBO Neeraj Arora, and a former lululemon executive. The cap table read less like a funding event and more like a product endorsement from people who understood the category. Total raised to date: $21.6 million across seven rounds from 37 investors, according to Tracxn data.
BlissClub posted ₹135 crore in revenue for FY25, growing 47 percent year-on-year while cutting its net loss from ₹44 crore to ₹20 crore — a 54 percent reduction in a single year, per RoC filings reported by Entrackr. The brand now runs 16 physical stores across eight cities, having started as a website-only business in 2020. According to Indian Startup News, the brand had crossed an annualised revenue run rate of ₹250 crore by January 2026.
The product portfolio is no longer just leggings. FreeDame, launched in December 2024, is an innerwear line built after an internal survey found 94 percent of women are dissatisfied with their bras and 90 percent are unhappy with their underwear. In early 2026, BlissClub entered menswear with The Legendary Collection — designed for men who live in India’s heat and want something better than denim.
Trust before transaction
According to Euromonitor’s 2025 sportswear report, BlissClub is the only homegrown D2C brand named as a category challenger in India’s sportswear segment — distinguished by its focus on “movementwear” engineered for Indian body types, climates, and everyday life. The brand now has 465,000 Instagram followers and a WhatsApp community that still functions as an informal product-development floor.
The community-first model has a financial logic that becomes clear at scale. When users co-create the product, they don’t need to be sold it. Retention and organic word-of-mouth take over from paid acquisition. Margeret’s mission — “spread happiness through movement” — predates the brand. She believed it when she was running yoga sessions for strangers in 2020. She still believes it now, five years on, while redesigning bras and building pants for Indian men who have given up on denim.
The leggings came second. The belief came first. That sequence — community before product, trust before transaction — is what made BlissClub harder to copy than it looks.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Minu Margeret and what is BlissClub?
Minu Margeret is the founder and CEO of BlissClub, India’s community-first women’s activewear brand, launched in Bengaluru in 2020. An ISB MBA and former Goldman Sachs and PhonePe professional, she built BlissClub after years of frustration finding activewear that worked for Indian women’s bodies. The brand is backed by Elevation Capital and Eight Roads Ventures and posted ₹135 crore in revenue for FY25 (source: RoC filings).
How did Minu Margeret start BlissClub?
Margeret founded BlissClub in March 2020 during the pandemic lockdown. Rather than launching a product immediately, she spent months building an online community of Indian women through Instagram and WhatsApp — running yoga sessions, 21-day fitness challenges, and open conversations about what activewear Indian women actually needed. The community’s direct feedback shaped BlissClub’s first product, The Ultimate Leggings, which launched in December 2020.
What makes BlissClub different from other activewear brands in India?
BlissClub is a community-first brand — meaning products are designed from direct community input rather than internal briefs. Key differentiators include functional deep pockets in all leggings, extended sizing, and fabrics engineered for Indian body types and climate. Euromonitor (2025) named it the only homegrown D2C brand to be cited as a category challenger in India’s sportswear segment. Competitors include HRX, Cultsport, and Cava Athleisure.
How much funding has BlissClub raised?
BlissClub has raised $21.6 million in total across seven funding rounds from 37 investors, according to Tracxn data. Its Series A of $18 million was led by Eight Roads Ventures and Elevation Capital and included angel investors such as Kunal Shah (CRED), Ghazal Alagh (Mamaearth), and former Myntra CEO Amar Nagaram. The most recent round in May 2025 was ₹45 crore in a mix of debt and equity, again led by Elevation Capital.
What products does BlissClub sell?
BlissClub started with The Ultimate Leggings in 2020 and has expanded across sports bras, tops, shorts, joggers, and travel wear. In December 2024, it launched FreeDame — an innerwear range designed for all-day comfort. In early 2026, it entered menswear with The Legendary Collection. Products are available on blissclub.com, Myntra, Ajio, Amazon, and 16 physical stores across India.
