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<ul><li>Home-grown platform Meesho is the latest start-up to join the unicorn club after raising $300 million from Softbank Vision Fund 2.</li><li>Founded in 2015, Meesho launched its first TVC in 2020 that aimed to celebrate financial independence of Indian women. It is now planning to go bullish on marketing with new campaigns and collaborations to expand its reseller user base.</li><li>Vidit Aatrey, Founder and CEO, Meesho walks us through the company’s journey from scratch, marketing goals for the year and shares his vision.</li></ul>It was in 2015 that Vidit Aatrey, Founder and CEO of Meesho decided to quit InMobi and start his own business. He and his partner Sanjeev Barnwal, Founder and CTO of Meesho came up with an idea to build a platform to help micro and small businesses shift online and leverage the power of digital technologies. So, as social commerce was struggling to make inroads in India, Meesho led the way and revolutionized the industry. “Social commerce was already a popular concept at that time but the challenges such as limited access to supply, lack of logistics/ payment options, customer friendly policies etc, were also on the rise,” shared Aatrey. Months went into experimenting with the idea, researching the market and getting the logistics right. They juggled between ideas until they perfected the core business proposition. Cut to today, Meesho has just raised $300 million in a new round of funding led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 on April 02. The startup has already joined the unicorn club. As per media reports, the new Series E round gives the five-year-old Bangalore-based company a valuation of $2.1 billion, up from about $600 million-$700 million in the 2019 Series D investment. The social commerce platform claims to have over 13 million entrepreneurs, a majority of whom are women. It has helped them start their own online businesses with zero investment, bringing the benefits of e-commerce to over 45 million customers across the country. Sharing why Aatrey started Meesho, he said, “‘Meesho’ stands for ‘meri shop’ or apni dukaan. Almost 9 out of every 10 individuals in India have a dream of starting his/her small business. Given the increasing number of self-employed, small business owners, gig workers in India it is no surprise that Indians have an enterprising mind. However, starting a business requires a lot of capital. India is not such a rich country. Most people do not have access to capital. These people who never had the opportunity to start a store came onto our platform and became entrepreneurs for the first time. One can come here, start his/her shop on WhatsApp, access anything from our supplier marketplace, and as per consumer orders, purchase is made from the marketplace.” Meesho primarily connects sellers with customers through social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook. It supervises logistics, online payment and provides real-time updates. Till date, the company has delivered orders from 100K+ registered suppliers to over 26,000 pin codes in more than 4,800 cities, helping generate over Rs 500 crore in income for entrepreneurs and serving customers in more than 4,500 Tier 2+ cities -- bringing e-commerce to Bharat. As per a recent report by Deloitte, India’s e-commerce is expected to grow from $24 billion in 2017 to $84 billion in 2021. Considering that India has about 60 million micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) currently, Meesho is just getting started. Aatrey said, “We have ~9M women entrepreneurs and India is roughly going to have more than 250M women who will be online by 2025. Given this understanding, we are just scratching the surfaces of enabling women to start their own business. With the growth that we have seen over the last year, we want to bring our value proposition to many aspiring women, and we see a lot of value in further communicating our value proposition. That said, we will consistently be communicating how Meesho can empower and enable women entrepreneurs in starting their home businesses.” According to Aatrey, the social reselling market in India is estimated to be $6-7 billion (GMV) in size as of 2020. By 2025, the social commerce is expected to be ~$70B and total ecommerce to be $200 Bn as the number of online shoppers, especially from tier II cities and beyond, continues to rise. After the pandemic, Meesho has also seen an increased adoption rate in Bharat. “Overall, more than 70% of our orders come from tier II+ towns. We have seen very good adoption in tier II+ towns during the pandemic: we have served 2000+ new tier 2+ towns since June and our order share from these towns has also increased from 67% earlier to 72% between July and December 2020,” said he. Aatrey believes that the future of online shopping is social commerce and more and more retail outlets have started exploring this medium after the pandemic. “I believe evolving technology is a wakeup call for everyone in business. It is imperative for all to realize the huge potential that digital has and ways to leverage it. The lockdown period came as a lesson for many of us. Many retailers in India resorted to selling products over WhatsApp and that shows how the retail market is also changing and moving towards digital. In fact, according to a retail website, today 85% of sellers using social commerce are small, offline retailers giving sharp competition to large organized sellers on e-commerce platforms. As per Bain Analysis, India has the highest number of internet users (572 million) globally, with substantial room for growth. So, the retail market has enough potential to leverage social commerce and bloom,” elaborated Aatrey. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Carving a niche beyond social commerce" text="Carving a niche beyond social commerce">Carving a niche beyond social commerce</cmsannotation> Since a majority of its sellers and buyers are women, Meesho’s communication also centers around women empowerment. Its mission is to help women achieve financial independence. Its first TVC, conceptualised by DDB Mudra, focused on an unstated need of a woman, which is to claim what she rightfully deserves – her own identity. The film celebrated the unstoppable spirit of women who overcome all social and economic barriers with the line that captures the sentiment of 'Not just a homemaker, a Meesho Entrepreneur.' <div type="Youtube" id="Y0nSzxtiShA" title="Many Names, One Identity #MyStoreMyStory" thumbUrl="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Y0nSzxtiShA/mqdefault.jpg"></div> Telling us more about the company's marketing proposition, Aatrey said, “We have more than 9 million resellers on our platform spread across 100 cities out of which 80% of them being women from smaller towns and cities. Social and cultural factors for years have kept this section of the society away from employment. Our strategy has always been to empower more and more people to fulfil their dream of becoming an entrepreneur, especially women, who due to social obligations sacrifice their dreams and fall behind in terms of financial independence. We wish to give them all a sense of self and accomplishment through our platform. Social media is our backbone and these entrepreneurs, our pillars of strength.” Meesho is also fighting against e-commerce giants like Amazon and Flipkart, who are ploughing billions of dollars and have been around for a while. Meesho’s rivals have on-boarded Bollywood celebrities and have a huge media presence. “In the era of Amazon and Flipkart, we at Meesho are trying to build trust through social commerce. Our strategy has always been to empower more and more people to fulfil their dream. Our communication will remain around our USP- to help build entrepreneurs with zero capital. We will also find more channels this year to penetrate our value proposition further,” said Aatrey. Vision After the recent funding round, Meesho is aiming to build a single ecosystem that will enable all small businesses to grow faster. “With the new round of funding, we are now focused on expanding our vision — from helping aspiring women entrepreneurs to creating Meesho as a single ecosystem that will enable all small businesses in India to succeed online. In the last one year, we have seen tremendous growth across small businesses and entrepreneurs seeking to move their businesses online. And with our new vision we will enable 100 million small businesses to start, succeed and lead their operations online with Meesho as their partner in their journey,” said Aatrey. The introduction of smartphones and penetration of the internet and WhatsApp in particular has made the market size for social commerce grow larger, which is estimated to reach $70B USD in 2025. Meesho aims to leverage this demand and go bullish on marketing with new campaigns and collaborations with different partners to accelerate its user base of resellers on the platform. “2021 has come with a new set of possibilities, opportunities, and challenges to tackle. We, at Meesho, are committed to our goal of letting anyone start a digital business with zero capital. Major focus area would be to enable increased adoption of Meesho’s platform across multiple categories which would be possible only when we are able to structurally reduce our prices for our customers. We also plan to leverage the digital ecosystem and unravel more benefits that it can offer for the betterment of our entrepreneurs and Meeho’s growth. We aim at surpassing all our achievements and recognitions from previous years and reach newer milestones. We are also looking at transforming the Meesho app for better experience for our entrepreneurs. With new built in features, we hope to enhance the look and feel of the app. ‘Meeshoites’ are looking at the year with great hope, plans and execution methods,” shared Aatrey.

Meesho's marketing strategy has been to empower women who lack financial independence, says CEO Vidit Aatrey

<ul><li><keyword id="3480589" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="meesho" source="Orion">Meesho</keyword> is the new kid on the block that has emerged as a challenger to <keyword id="18635" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="amazon" source="Orion">Amazon</keyword> and <keyword id="6354742" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="flipkart" source="Orion">Flipkart</keyword> with 120 mn users</li><li>Aims to bring 100 mn small sellers across India online</li><li>The newly minted unicorn is looking at going public in less than two years after it turns profitable.</li></ul>Shaan Ansari is a 19-year old entrepreneur who lives in the historic city of Panipat, 100 kms north of Delhi, and he may never qualify for any list celebrating under-20 entrepreneurs, but his story is no less inspiring than Ranveer Singh’s character in Gully Boy. The pandemic put his father out of work and Ansari out of school back in 2020. When crisis struck, Ansari went scouting for opportunities online that would require zero investment and he found it in Meesho, a social commerce platform that is designed to help solo entrepreneurs and small businesses sell their wares to a wider audience. Ansari sourced bath mats and door mats made locally and started selling them on Meesho. When his suppliers could not meet the demand, Ansari borrowed money to start his own factory. Today he manufactures these mats from a rented factory, employs 50 people and clocks revenues of ₹30 lakh a month. It is transformational stories like Ansari’s that keep Meesho’’s co-founder and CEO Vidit Aatrey and his team going. Recalling his trip to Panipat, Aatrey, says, “The neighbourhood that Ansari lives in is a really humble one and his home actually doubles up as a warehouse. When I visited him, his staff and family offered dry fruits with chai. Ansari kept telling us how his family’s fortunes have changed after he discovered Meesho. As a team we travel every quarter to listen to sellers like Ansari on our platform and are now attempting to solve some of their other financial needs so that they don’t have to go to money lenders for working capital needs.” <div type="image" title="Meesho_1 (1)" height="900" width="1200" msid="93702892" hostid="261"></div> 100 million sellers to reach a billion buyers Aatrey’s dream is to get a million local businesses online so that they expand their markets by selling wares across India, irrespective of where they are located. In the last two years, this new kid on the block has emerged as a challenger to the Big Boys of e-commerce. Meesho - which is a short code for ‘my shop’ - has gotten bigger after the pandemic with 120 million monthly active users (MAUs) in a short span of time. Flipkart and Amazon have 200 million registered users each. Meesho’s target is to have 100 million sellers on its platform and sell to a billion buyers. Meesho was born on the premise that for online commerce to genuinely offer value, local retailers had to go online. Unorganized retail accounts for 90% of India’s spends. But when Aatrey and his co-founder Sanjeev Bamwal discovered that the sellers were not coming online because the buyers were not all shopping online. The pandemic has enabled Meesho to bring a lot more local businesses online as it was a matter of their survival. Challenging Amazon and Flipkart In the early days, Meesho’s sales were driven by 15 million women resellers, who bought products from the platform and sold it through WhatsApp and Facebook groups. From being a social commerce platform driven by re-sellers, it today has a share of nearly 30% in total daily online deliveries. Of the 9 million e-commerce orders processed daily, Meesho accounts for 2.7 million, while the two biggies account for 5 million. Clearly, Meesho is the challenger that nobody expected would catch up with Amazon and Flipkart. Another interesting statistic says that of the 70 million shoppers online, only 10 million are digital natives. It is a no-brainer then that India’s small businesses can provide the network effect to any online commerce platform that chooses to target this segment. Meesho waded into this space back in 2015, but found it tough to convince small entrepreneurs to come online because their customers were not online either. Language barriers and quality of internet speeds were only a few reasons why sellers were not online. Even when they brought sellers online, their buyers were still not online nor was Meesho’s app on too many smartphones. This changed after the pandemic but before that it was Meesho’s army of 15 million women resellers that drove its gross merchandise value up until 2020. Meesho is called a social commerce channel because it has been built by women resellers who found a vocation and economic independence by reselling goods purchased from the platform on WhatsApp and Facebook groups. Between 2017 and 2020, 100% sales were happening through resellers. The share of these women resellers is now down to 20% as consumers have now started downloading the app. Meesho’s monthly average users stand at 120 million and 35 million users transact on the app every month. On an average, 110 million Indian shoppers bought on Meesho last year. Not surprising that investors have also queued up to invest in the company. After raising seed capital of $300,000 from angel investors in March 2016, Meesho is valued at $4.9 bn after its latest round of capital raise of $570 mn in September 2021. Its list of marquee investors include Soft Bank Vision Fund 2, Prosus, Fidelity Management and Research, Yuri Milner’s DST Partners, Sequoia, SAIF Partners and Y Combinator among others. Sellers turn brand ambassadors <div type="image" title="Meesho_2 (1)" height="900" width="1200" msid="93702936" hostid="261"></div> Currently, there are six lakh sellers like Ansari on Meesho and the start-up wants to take this to one million. This goal may be work-in-progress, but every week employees join the Meesho Sabha, a meeting where examples like Ansari are discussed at length so that the team does not take its eyes off the goal post. Even though Meesho continues with its outreach programme to help sellers, existing sellers have now become brand ambassadors who are helping others get online. The platform offers peer-to-peer learning in several languages for those who want to get started. Says Dhiresh Bansal, chief financial officer of Meesho, “We still do our outreach programmes but a lot of people are now coming to our platform, as they need to diversify by targeting newer markets. Also the younger generation is more progressive and are taking their family businesses online.” After its success in the last two years, Meesho’s working hard to resolve several issues of sellers on its platform. Most of these sellers have seen a sharp rise in demand for their products after going online and the need for working capital requirement has gone up sharply. Lucknow-based Suman Agrawal used to sell women’s fashion clothing at her boutique but has shut it down after her brand Rudraksh saw sales boom on Meesho. She currently manages 22,000 orders a month. There are several sellers in India who cannot go online because they don’t have the requisite GST number. Aatrey has been a votary of their cause for a while. In June this year, the GST Council cleared a proposal that will no longer require sellers on e-commerce platforms to have a GST registration, if their turnover is less than ₹40 lakh and ₹20 lakh for goods and services respectively. This rule will come into effect from January 2023. Aatrey believes that this will be a game changer for millions of small sellers across India. While the company is not looking to raise capital immediately, it has plans to turn profitable and then hit the markets in a couple of years. The e-commerce player is looking at tightening its belt on costs now that it has attained scale. If it has to turn profitable in under 2 years then Meesho will have to cut back on cashburn and conserve capital. Aatrey says, “This festive season will give us an indication if there is any slowdown. We have not seen that so far, so it will be something that we will learn from.” <div type="image" title="Meesho_3 (1) (1)" height="900" width="1200" msid="93703012" hostid="261"></div> SEE ALSO: <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/news/sensex-slips-517-points-goes-below-the-60000-mark/articleshow/93701486.cms">Sensex slips 517 points, goes below the 60,000-mark</a> <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/news/not-just-ev-makers-there-are-many-more-stocks-that-can-gain-from-ev-play/articleshow/93696654.cms">Not just EV makers, there are many more stocks that can gain from EV play</a>

Meet India’s Real Gully Boy: Vidit Aatrey of Meesho is taking the entrepreneurial dream deep inside Bharat

<ul><li><keyword id="7413620" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="simsim">simsim</keyword> will continue to work independently as a separate entity even after the acquisition.</li><li>It has raised about $15.5 million to date from Accel, Shunwei Capital and Good Capital.</li><li>The Indian social commerce segment is really hot at the moment, with the entry of Tiger Global and SoftBank.</li></ul>US-based search giant Google’s video streaming platform <keyword id="10879" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="YouTube">YouTube</keyword> has announced the acquisition of Indian <keyword id="9674678" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Video-Commerce">video commerce</keyword> platform simsim on Tuesday, July 20. The firms have not disclosed any financial details of the deal. simsim -- founded by Amit Bagaria, Kunal Suri, and Saurabh Vashishtha in June 2019 -- is an e-commerce platform that helps small businesses transaction to the digital economy using videos and content creation. The company connects local businesses, influencers and customers. “We started simsim with the mission of helping users across India shop online with ease, enabled through small sellers and brands showcasing and selling their products using the power of content by trusted influencers. Being a part of the YouTube and Google ecosystem furthers simsim in its mission,” the company’s co-founders said in a joint statement. simsim will continue to work independently as a separate entity even after the acquisition. YouTube, however, is now finding ways to showcase simsim offers to its viewers. “For over 15 years, small businesses have used YouTube to expand their presence online -- and many of them use YouTube to reach customers outside of their local community, from<a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/KAMSDESIGNERZONE/about"> Interior</a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/InteriorMaata/about"> Designers</a> to<a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/PrashantiHQ/featured"> Silk Saree sellers</a>. By bringing simsim and YouTube together, our goal is to help small businesses and retailers in India reach new customers in even more powerful ways,” Gautam Anand, vice president of YouTube Asia Pacific, said in a <a href="https://india.googleblog.com/2021/07/helping-viewers-discover-and-buy.html">blog post</a>. simsim has raised about $15.5 million to date from marquee investors like Accel, Xiaomi’s Shunwei Capital and Good Capital. The India social commerce segment is really hot at the moment, especially after the entry of Meesho in the unicorn club in April 2021. A unicorn, in startup parlance, is a private firm valued at or more than $1 billion. Earlier this month, DealShare announced a $144<a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/social-commerce-startup-dealshare-raises-144-million-from-tiger-global/articleshow/84227890.cms"> million </a>funding round led by Tiger Global and co-led by WestBridge Capital, Alpha Wave Incubation and Z3Partners. In June, CityMall raised a $22<a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/citymall-a-startup-that-helps-budding-entrepreneurs-start-their-ventures-on-whatsapp-has-raised-over-22-million/articleshow/83741383.cms"> million</a> funding round led by General Catalyst and Jungle Ventures, with participation from existing investors Accel, Elevation Capital (formerly known as SAIF Partners) and WaterBridge Ventures. Meesho, on the other hand, has raised $515 million to date from SoftBank, Facebook and others. The company had raised<a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/facebook-backed-meesho-raises-300-million-from-softbank-vision-fund-2-valuation-jumps-to-over-2-billion/amp_articleshow/81907721.cms?utm_campaign=fullarticle&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_source=inshorts"> $300 million</a> at a valuation of $2 billion. SEE ALSO: <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/news/india-has-added-36191-new-companies-between-april-to-june-this-year/articleshow/84575166.cms">India added almost double the number of new businesses in the last three months compared to same time last year, while India was mostly under lockdown</a> <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/apps/news/jeff-bezos-intimate-messages-data-from-drug-cartels-adnan-kashoggi-the-many-things-pegasus-is-suspected-of-hacking-before-whatsapp/articleshow/71849602.cms">Jeff Bezos’ intimate messages, data from drug cartels, Jamal Kashoggi — the many things Pegasus is suspected of hacking instead of terrorists and criminals</a>

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Meesho's marketing strategy has been to empower women who lack financial independence, says CEO Vidit Aatrey

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