Meesho is Built Upon the Bedrock of Technology

Nilesh Gupta, General Manager, Growth at Meesho shares his insights on the growth factors, technology and relevance of the brand in tier 2 cities and beyond

- Mannu Mathew

Founded in 2015, by IIT Delhi graduates Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Bansal, Meesho is taking established e-commerce biggies Flipkart and Amazon head-on. A large part of its success comes from its popularity beyond metros. Today, nearly 80% of its customers come from tier 2 markets and beyond-many of whom have started their e-commerce journey with Meesho compared to around 60% that other e-commerce majors witnessed during a festive season in October 2022.

Meesho is driven by small businesses, which partner with Meesho owing to its industry-first initiatives such as zero commission, which helps sellers to pass on the savings to the customers. On average, sellers on Meesho have seen their business grow by 82% within two years as per details shared by the company.

The company recorded 140 million transacting users and aims to build a platform that promises ease of operations with visibility of all its products. SoftBank-backed Meesho became the first e-commerce unicorn to post consolidated profit after tax (PAT) in the second quarter that ended September 2023, news agency PTI reported.

The financial year (FY) 2022-23 was a year of growth for Meesho. Its revenue from operations grew by an impressive 77% over the previous year to ₹5,735 crore, the company told IndiaRetailing. Meesho substantially reduced spending on server and infrastructure components, along with a 50% reduction in cloud costs. As a result, the company's losses came down by 48% from ₹3,248 crore in FY 202122 to ₹1,675 crore in FY 2022-23.

The e-commerce platform also reported significant reductions in customer acquisition cost (CAC) and an 80% (YoY) drop in marketing spending. Despite this, Meesho remains the most downloaded shopping app in India.