4 May 2020
Meesho : India's Fastest Growing Reselling Platform

    Meesho, a social e-commerce startup based at Bangalore, recently raised a whopping sum of $125 million in a Series D funding round. The round was led by VC firm Naspers, in collaboration with their existing investors Shunwei Capital, SAIF, Sequoia Capital, Venture Highway and RPS Capital. The funding round also witnessed participation from the likes of Facebook and Vodafone Group's CEO Arun Sarin.


    The startup boasts of a network consisting of no less than 2 million resellers and a coverage of 700 towns across India. The resellers in Meesho mainly deal in electronic items, home appliances and apparel. In the company's four-year run, they managed to raise $190 million in revenue.



      About the company


    Meesho is a Bangalore-based e-commerce portal that was founded jointly in December by two IIT-Delhi graduates Sanjeev Burnwal and Vidit Aathrey in 2015. It is a platform which enables individuals and small businesses to set up an online store using social platforms like Instagram, Facebook and Whatsapp.


    It boasts of being one of the very few companies to be chosen for 2016’s Y combinator. It also took part in the first batch of Google launchpad programs. With the Series D round in place, Meesho is the first Indian startup to receive investment from Facebook.


    Meesho handles a network of over 2 million resellers and has a nation-wide coverage spanning across no less than 700 cities. The resellers are mostly of a domestic background. Meesho's user base is almost 80 percent of women.

      Awards and accolades


    Meesho was ranked 8th amongst 25 Y Combinator incubated startups by the VC-statistics platform Mattermark in August 2016. In 2017, Deccan Chronicle named Meesho among the top apps equipping social commerce. Forbes India, in February 2018, featured Meesho's founders in its 30 under 30 achievers.


    Meesho was also featured as one of India's growing businesses in Forbes Asia. Meesho was also selected as a part of the prestige program- Google Launchpad's "Solve for India" initiative which drove participant companies to come up with tech solutions suited for Indian demography. LinkedIn also mentioned Meesho among the top startup employers in India.


      Aim


    Meesho aims to utilize the fresh capital to expand its coverage and add as many as 18 million resellers in its network by the end of 2020. Meesho dubs this investment as the fuel which will help the community of aspiring small-scale women entrepreneurs to grow. The company hopes to provide a stepping platform for those businesses which lacked the required resources to achieve a greater outreach.


    Meesho also has plans to utilize the newly augmented funds as a means to reinforce their technology platform so that it can accommodate new products from its resellers.


    Meesho is trying to push its technology as a solution to the offline unorganised businesses across India. The company is helping the struggling entrepreneurs establish a digital footprint as well as provide deeper penetration into the customer base.


      Conclusion


    Meesho has hit a sweet spot among both the small-scale businesses as well as the customers. Meesho is making advances towards creating a marketplace where the division between genders is blurred beyond recognition, where people can overcome differences in education levels and hope that their risks pay dividends.


    Meesho boasts that at least 70 percent of its resellers have managed to find themselves a degree of economic freedom and identity as a business, without even having to step outside. With the augmentation of new funds, Meesho hopes that its reach helps more and more small-scale businesses find support with the help of their platform.



    Meesho  Reselling APP  Social Commerce  Funding  Ecommerce startup  Startup India  Investment