Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal, two IIT Delhi alumni who launched the social commerce platform Meesho in December 2015, The platform enables individuals and small businesses to place their products through online platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, etc. The founder and CEO, Vidit Aatrey, stated that “Meesho” refers for “Meri Shop” or apni dukaan. Since the majority of people wish to create their own businesses but lack access to capital, Meesho assists people in starting their own online selling businesses with zero investment. It aided many persons who later become self-employed in seizing the chance and going out on their own.

The Meesho app is available for both iOS and Android mobile devices. Any person can create an account with Meesho. After that, he or she will be able to create links for the products that are offered on the Meesho App. Then, he or she shares the links on social networking sites like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Meesho manages the logistics, accepts online payments, and delivers real-time information when a customer purchases a product.

To present, Meesho has shipped orders from more than 100,000 registered suppliers to more than 26,000 pin codes in over 4,800 locations. brings e-commerce to India by generating over Rs 500 crore in revenue for business owners and serving clients in more than 4,500 Tier 2+ cities. More than 13 million entrepreneurs are allegedly connected to Meesho through their platform.  It appears that the majority of entrepreneurs are women. The Social Commerce Platform enables their resellers to launch their own online businesses with no capital outlay.

Story of inception

Vidit Aatrey (Founder & CEO of Meesho) decided to leave InMobi and start his own business in 2015. Then he co-founded Meesho with his partner Sanjeev Barnwal (Founder & CTO). They were both classmates, and they came up with the idea to create a platform to assist MSMEs (Micro. Small and Medium Enterprises). As social commerce struggled to find a foothold in India, Meesho led the way and revolutionized the industry.

In the year 2015, the founders of Meesho conceived of a venture called FASHNEAR. The company was entirely focused on making fashion-related items available to direct customers. It also promoted and simplified the process of purchasing clothing and fashion accessories for customers.

However, the founders gradually discovered a few flaws in FASHNEAR’s business model. One of the major disadvantages they discovered was that consumers were less concerned about buying clothes from local stores. Sellers, on the other hand, wanted to accelerate their sales by spreading their roots across the country and refusing to be limited to local areas. All of these issues compelled the founders to implement new strategies and develop a more effective business model. Throughout the process of improvement, they created India’s leading retail shop-Meesho-in 2015.

The duo visited many resellers to identify their business and process problems. They observed and discovered that most of the sellers were already selling their products via WhatsApp, but their reach was limited because they only delivered locally. They also discovered that the majority of the shops registered on Meesho were run by women, who sold their wares from their homes rather than in physical stores. Meesho’s current business model was designed with these facts and issues in mind, and women can now start a reselling business from home without owning any inventory using Meesho. Meesho also now enables small shops and manufacturers to deliver their goods across the country while it handles product delivery, facilitates COD options, and ensures that customers can easily return the products if they so desire.

How Fashnear become Meesho

 Both Vidit and Sanjeev perceived that the “Fashnear” business model isn’t working because people were less interested in their products being local and more interested in sales. While an online store sells its products 24/7,  the offline stores they connected was able to offer clearance sales. However, the positive side is knowing the market intimately and also learning the ability to interact with shop owners.

 When they met with the owner of a local shop  in Koramangala The shop owner told them  that he already sells his products online through the social media platforms where he regularly posts photos uploads. These customers would place an order and one of your employees would make the delivery and collect the money. And this inspired both the founders a powerful idea, for their business model .

 Soon Fashnear became Meesho and also received a good response but  still they didn’t had a revenue model. They created a platform where any trader could also log into Meesho using their Facebook credentials, after which all of their information was migrated and a website for their business was created in just a few  clicks. Meesho also helped with automated warehouse and  inventory management which helped them to gather 10,000+ stores in not more than 6 months.

Future Plans

Meesho had truly showed its power with  $4.9 billion of its valuation but now the company seems to be hitting hard times and is facing investors with a strategy shift high in cash-burning, no profit in sight and growing competition from big players like Flipkart and Amazon. The company recently changed its business model, bringing it closer to that of e-commerce platforms.

 Meesho abruptly shifted its strategy from social commerce to B2C, abandoned international expansion to promote small-town groceries, and  also switched from a zero-commission model to advertising monetization. With small and big e-commerce giants and their growing power and creating dominance is distressing for ex – Flipkart entered the social commerce domain back in July 2021 with its Shopsy app, challenging Meesho by taking away part of its resellers

To tackle from it Meesho is expecting to have a 100 million monthly transactional users, by December , 2022 and also it has planned to use the investors money to double its product and technical capabilities, by expanding its product list to over 50 million products and to remain the most preferred platform for all.

References

1. https://www.startupauthority.in/blogs/meesho-business-model/
2. https://edurev.in/studytube/Idea-behind-the-Starting-of-Meesho/9867bcb0-bc81-4f7e-8e4b-687ba0048f23_t
3. https://successko.com/how-meesho-started-idea-behind-the-starting-of-meesho/

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/meesho-turns-5-take-walk-down-memory-lane-ceo-co-founder-dilip

Aishwarya Says:

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