the rise of meesho

2015

Beginnings

Neeraj met Vidit and Sanjeev, his juniors from at IIT Delhi when they were building Fashnear, a hyperlocal fashion platform. In these conversations, Neeraj saw a mission-driven team with a desire to disrupt the large, Indian fashion industry. Venture Highway wrote the first institutional check in Meesho.

Early Learnings

After interacting with a local shop owners they learnt how these sellers were leveraging Facebook and WhatsApp groups to generate demand. They would post pictures, the customers would place an order their employees would make the delivery and collect the cash. They built a product to enable this channel. It worked, Meesho registered 10000+ shops in less than 6 months.

Pivot

They noticed that most of these digital shops on the Meesho app were run by women, who called themselves resellers. While a shopkeeper added new products to Meesho every quarter, these resellers would update their daily. These resellers did not have any inventory. They posted products of other local suppliers on Meesho, sold via WhatsApp. This was akin to building a virtual boutique. “If everyone in India could start a shop like this, it would be super powerful." - Vidit

2016

Eureka

This business model was not replicable. No two small businesses functioning in different parts of the country could trust each other to offer cash on delivery (CoD) or have a return policy for the end customer. They founded the right model. Meesho bridged the gap between suppliers and resellers.

VENTURE HIGHWAY INVESTED $2.4M IN AUGUST 2017

At the time we signed a term sheet with Meesho in July 2017 they had:

november 2017

10,000+ MEESHO ENTREPRENEURS

empowered by the platform

june 2018

$11.5M RAISED

$11.5M raised from Sequoia, Elevation, Y Combinator, Venture Highway

august 2018

1,50,000+ MEESHO ENTREPRENEURS

november 2018

$50M RAISED

$50M raised from Shunwei, RPS Ventures, Apoletto, Elevation, Sequoia, Y Combinator, Venture Highway

may 2019

1,250,000+ MEESHO ENTREPRENEURS

june 2019

FACEBOOK'S FIRST INDIA INVESTMENT

$125M raised from Facebook, Naspers, Elevation, Sequoia, Venture Highway, RPS Ventures

september 2020

5,200,000+ MEESHO ENTREPRENEURS

march 2021

BOLDER AMBITION

Meesho's unmatched selection and lowest prices started attracting end customers to the platform. Vidit and Sanjeev decided to double-down on this shift, and Meesho's vision expanded to building the E-commerce destination for the next 500 million consumers in India

april 2021

UNICORN VALUATION

Meesho became India's first social commerce unicorn after raising $300 Mn in Series E from SoftBank Vision Fund at a valuation of over $2 Bn

june 2021

TOP RANKED APP

Meesho became the top-ranked app on Google Play Store India with a rating of 4.4 and crossed 50 million downloads on Android.

today

MEESHO TODAY

Today, Meesho is India's largest social commerce platform. But more importantly, it has helped millions of women across India develop a new professional identity and a source of independence: