Meesho — short for “Meri Shop” was started by Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal with the idea to enable mom & pop stores to sell online. Later they realized their primary users were actually sellers who did not own a shop but used to sell in their social network. The founders quickly realized that this is how small businesses will work in the future and built a product to democratize social commerce and enable literally anyone to start their own venture. The founders quickly pivoted to enabling social sellers/entrepreneurs to monetize their network by providing supply, logistics, and payments infrastructure. Today Meesho has helped ~7M entrepreneurs start their businesses.
Meesho, along with leading e-commerce growth, is also fueling economic growth by creating a new source of income and novel business profile across India. We have empowered more than ~7M entrepreneurs by providing them an opportunity to earn their livelihood. We have enabled housewives, young mothers, aspiring entrepreneurs, students, teachers, and even retired people to launch, build, and promote their online business by creating an alternate distribution channel. And all of this without any investment — a problem that most people in lower-income groups face in India.
Meesho is Series D funded with an investment round led by South African company Prosus (previously known as Naspers) along with participation from Facebook and existing investors such as Elevation Capital (previously SAIF Partners), Sequoia, Shunwei Capital, RPS, and Venture Highway in 2019. We have raised $190M to date.
Meesho is headquartered in Bengaluru, India, and was one of the three Indian companies to be selected for Y Combinator in 2016. It was also a part of the first batch of the Google Launchpad - Solve for India program. In 2018 and 2019 (for two consecutive years), Meesho was named by LinkedIn as LinkedIn India’s Top 25 Startups - 2019 to work for based on top talent pull, jobseeker interest, and levels of professional engagement with its employees. Meesho has also featured on Y Combinator’s Top Companies List 2019 and its recent 2021 list, has made it to Fast Company’s The World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies in 2020, and was declared as The Young Turks Startup of the Year at The India Business Leaders Awards 2020 by CNBC TV-18.
It was an incidental meeting with a few small business owners who had discovered the power of social platforms in starting and scaling their business that led to the inception of Meesho. The founders quickly realized that this is how small businesses will work in the future and built a product to democratize social commerce and enable literally anyone to start this.
Today, Meesho serves over 5 million individuals and enterprises, raised $65 million, and achieved 50X growth within 3 years.