NoBarr, a size-inclusive fashion brand’s Founder & CEO, makes it to The Wharton School
Growing up in Delhi, a city where history, diverse cultures, and modern chaos blend seamlessly, shaped Mansi’s perspective on life and nurtured warmth, resilience, and an unyielding spirit.
Given her deep interest in understanding the business world, she pursued Commerce throughout high school and then joined Shaheed Sukhdev College of Commerce to pursue a Bachelor’s in Management Studies and graduated with a major in Finance.
The three years of undergraduate education were marked by significant leadership experiences that shaped her entrepreneurial drive. As the CEO of the Entrepreneurship Cell, Founding President of Mark&Tonic, a digital marketing agency, and the President of Mark-It, the Marketing Society, Mansi worked across Travel and Food & Beverages live projects. She gained an in-depth understanding of how a business in the current digital age functions, especially with the boom in the growth of e-Commerce platforms like Amazon or Flipkart.
This inspired her to dabble her hands into the world of digital businesses and begin her entrepreneurial journey in 2018 as the Founder of Mansi Collections, currently known as NoBarr.
While growing up, Mansi struggled with a lack of clothing options due to the limited sizes offered by most brands. Hearing words like ‘Sorry, we don’t have your size’ for the 10,000th time, almost every shopping trip ended in body image issues and self-doubt. Recognizing that 30M plus size women in India struggle with the same plight, Mansi knew she had to address this gap.
So, she experimented with providing Western clothing options from XS to 4XL and sold through Amazon and Flipkart. Taking small steps at a time, she grew the business and, seeing a great response from the audience, decided to take the next step. That’s when Mansi renamed her business in 2020 to NoBarr and got onboarded onto all the top fashion e-commerce marketplaces, including Nykaa, Ajio and Myntra.
As the business grew, she realized her vision – to scale NoBarr into a global, size-inclusive fashion conglomerate and cultivate body positivity and self-acceptance, which is a key driver of women’s empowerment.
Cognizant of the skills, exposure, and network she would need to develop as an Entrepreneur to execute her dream, Mansi decided to apply for deferred MBA programs during the last year of her undergrad. Working with the Admissions Gateway Team, Mansi applied to M7 Business Schools and received an offer from Columbia Business School with $100k in financial aid.
After graduating from the University of Delhi, she had to take a call – whether to pursue her entrepreneurial journey full-time or accept Bain & Company’s offer to join them as an Analyst. Recognizing that the business was still at an early stage and she could manage it well on the weekends, she decided to work for Bain.
Over the next two years, she grew into the role of an Associate and managed NoBarr as her side hustle, taking executive decisions over the weekend. Finally, in 2023, Mansi realized that with her dreams of taking her brand to the global center stage, and the knowledge of her MBA starting in Fall 2024, it was time for her to quit her job and dedicate herself entirely to her business.
During this period, she decided that she wanted to give one last shot and re-apply to her dream school – Wharton. That’s when she reapproached Admissions Gateway to reapply for the Wharton MBA progran. Helping her overcome obstacles such as low work experience (2 years at the time of reapplication), we worked with her on her Wharton MBA applications. With tons of late nights and weekends going into it, she finally received an offer from The Wharton School along with $80k in financial aid (~50% tuition).
Accepting this offer, she is now pursuing her MBA at Wharton pursuing a career at the intersection of fashion and e-commerce. Studying in classrooms where some of the world’s greatest changemakers have learned and having the privilege to join such a strong community of leaders, walking into Huntsman Hall, and seeing the Dhirubhai Ambani auditorium fills Mansi’s heart with pride. She hopes that one day she, too, might create a legacy and have her name inscribed on one of these halls.
Given her exceptional story, Poets&Quants, the most reputed platform covering stories on all things MBA recently did an interview with her and published her story on their website. Click here to read her full Poets&Quants story.