HIGHLIGHTS:
• Meesho, stands for “Meri eShop” (my shop in English)
• IIT Delhi students Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal founded Meesho
In late 2015, IIT Delhi students Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal founded Meesho, which stands for “Meri eShop” (my shop in English). It’s India’s first social commerce network, allowing small enterprises and individuals to trade for free from the comfort of their own homes. Meesho was one of three Indian startups chosen by Y Combinator in 2016.
Meesho focuses on tier 2 and 3 cities, claiming to have over 17 million resellers, 15 million of them are women (as per June 2021). They have 60,000 suppliers as well.
“I hail from a middle-class family who has always shopped from local enterprises. “We wanted to get them online,” Aatrey explains. “In India, over half a billion people use WhatsApp on a regular basis, and about 100 million individuals shop on e-commerce platforms.” This means that 80% of India’s smartphone users are still not conducting business online. “There is a huge chance to bring the next generation of e-commerce buyers online,”founder of Meesho said.
Meesho’s reselling approach is similar to aided purchase in that the reseller can distribute any product in their network using social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp, among others. If someone wants to place an order for a customer, all they have to do is add their profit margin to the goods and market it. Meesho will ship the item directly to you.
This benefits everyone: the supplier saves money on marketing and shipping, the reseller makes money on every product they sell, and Meesho gets their commission from the provider.
How was Meesho Founded?
Meesho’s Founder and CEO, Vidit Aatrey, elected to leave his job at InMobi to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams. Then he co-founded Meesho with Sanjeev Barnwal, a Sony employee at the time. They were classmates from 2008 to 2012, and they joined together with the goal of creating a platform to assist the MSME sector (Micro. Small and Medium Enterprises). So, at a time when social commerce in India was struggling to find a foothold, Meesho led the way and changed the industry.
Meesho’s founders quit their secure employment to create something on their own. They began by going by the moniker FASHNEAR. They appeared to be attempting to create a platform for fashion, similar to what Zomato, Swiggy, and Grofers did for food and grocery, respectively. They intended to use our app to sign up for many retailers in various locations.Potential customers might choose things from these stores and have them delivered to their homes by a delivery person. They could choose what they wanted, pay for it, and return the rest if they didn’t need it.
Fashnear’s Transformation into Meesho
They realised that the “Fashnear” marketing concept was failing because customers were more concerned with sales than with the fact that their items were local. Whereas an online business can sell its products 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, the physical retailers with which they were partnering could only provide end-of-season discounts. However, knowing the market from the ground up and learning how to engage with store owners are both advantages.
After that, they worked on a prototype and software to take this company concept to the next level. Meesho was founded in this manner.
Meesho’s Story of Success
Meesho is the most recent addition to the Unicorn Club. They hit the $1 billion valuation milestone in under 5 years. They recently raised $300 million from Softbank Vision Fund 2 at a valuation of 2.1 billion dollars. Facebook, Shunwei Capital, Venture Highway, and Knollwood Investment were among the existing investors in this round.
