Trial & error: How India's new unicorn Meesho cracked social commerce code

Born in December 2015, Meesho's goal is simple-to help small businesses get online and sell through social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram

Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi batchmates Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal always wanted to solve problems.
 
Years after graduating, the two took the entrepreneurial plunge and founded Meesho in December 2015 with a simple goal — to help small businesses get online and sell through social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram.
 
The start-up on Monday became the fifth Indian uni­corn of 2021 after raising $300 million from Softbank, a little over five years after inception.
 
“We just started with one format of enabling women to start their next fashion boutique selling on social platforms, and over the last four years we’ve empowered more than 13 million women entrepreneurs to come online and become successful by our platform,” said CEO Aatrey in a video address after the fresh fundraise.
 
The road to success, tho­ugh, wasn’t so smooth. After graduating, Aatrey went on to join InMobi, while Barnwal honed his technology skills at Samsung and Sony. Both then got together to start FashNear, which helped users find fashion stores nearby, and the company curated the inventory through an app catalogue.
 
This was useful for customers, given they could get fashion products on demand, Aviral Bhatnagar of A Junior VC wrote in a 2018 post.
 
In 2016, they pivoted the model to allow small businesses to set up an online shop, while facilitating sharing on online media, and that’s how Meesho was born. The first customer of Meesho received the delivery of a T-shirt from Barnwal himself. His daughter took to Twitter on Monday to say that her father had kept the T-shirt “as a joke” to wear when Meesho became worth a billion dollars.
 
The fresh funding round — which more than doubled its valuation — was led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, valuing the firm at $2.1 billion. It hit the headlines in 2019 for being the first company in India that attracted investment from Facebook.
 
“We take pride at the rate of speed and the scale at which Meesho has grown, positively impacting millions of lives, and creating exponential learning along the way,” said Aatrey.
 

What is social commerce and how does Meesho work?
 

Social commerce means buying and selling directly through a social media platform such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram or Twitter — is expected to grow significantly in the next few years. The app user is referred to as the reseller.

Meesho explains how the model works:

- Reselling with Meesho is like running your own business with zero investment

- As a Reseller, you share products listed on the Meesho app either with your network or on social media and earn a profit with every sale

- Over 100,000 products are listed on the app

- The products are provided by suppliers who have a tie-up with Meesho

- Reselling with Meesho is an easy way of working from home and earning profits
 

Competition:

GlowRoad, Shop 101, Bulbul and SimSim