Meesho curates online mandi shopping

Meesho is all set to disrupt the market

• Meesho is an online shopping platform owned by the Indian company Fashnear Technologies Private Limited. It is an online marketplace that facilitates trade between suppliers, resellers and customers, with heavy reliance of external social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, Meesho is an Indian e-commerce application which has recently introduced the grocery home delivery feature in its existing app.
• India’s fastest growing internet commerce company is integrating its grocery business within the core application.
• The company has also rebranded Farmiso to Meesho Superstore, representing its continued focus to fulfil consumer demand for daily essentials in tier 2 markets.
• Meesho Superstore currently provides 500 products across categories like fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, groceries, home care, and packaged food among others. The integration will now provide the company’s 100 million+ Meesho users access to over 87 million active product listings across 36+ categories on a single platform.
• Meesho launched a pilot in Karnataka to make online grocery shopping affordable for first-time users. In less than 9 months, it has scaled its grocery offering to 6 states Karnataka, Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, and Madhya Pradesh. As the pilot continues to gain momentum, Meesho plans to make Superstore available in 12 states by the end of 2022.

E-commerce still grappling

• As 2024 unfolds, supermarkets and grocery stores continue to grapple with inflation, supply chain disruptions, and labour issues, while food prices continue to top the list of consumer concerns, particularly among Generation Z and millennials.
• On a more positive note, while the global pandemic of 2020 and beyond certainly turned the industry upside down, it also accelerated innovations, such as online shopping, home/curbside delivery, and the increased use of chatbots and other forms of AI.
• According to reports, the Grocery Delivery market in India is expected to grow at 19.24% (CAGR 2024-2029), resulting in a market volume of $73.89bn by 2029.
• The number of current users in this market is expected to reach 249.8 million users by 2029.
• Meesho has to find a way to achieve consistent numbers to fuel its sustainability in this cut-throat market.

Challenges on its way

• There are many platforms in the market like Swiggy Instamart and Blinkit which are offering facilities like express delivery in 10 mins to attract the customers.
• Some of these brands are funded by mega unicorns which gives them extra leverage to take risks. These brands are certainly old in the market when compared to Meesho.
• Even after all this, the brand’s biggest competitor is D-Mart which is said to be one of the biggest foods retailor in the country.
• Meesho had initially launched a pilot program in Karnataka to make online grocery shopping more affordable, with the goal of expanding it to 12 states by the end of 2022.

The Meesho Men

• Meesho was founded in 2015 by IIT Delhi graduates Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal. In the next year, Aatrey and Barnwal joined Y Combinator where they secured $120,000.
• Between 2016 and 2018, the startup managed to raise around $65 million from multiple investors including China’s Shunwei Capital and Indian venture capital firms SAIF Partners, DST Partners, RPS Ventures, Sequoia India, SAIF Partners, and Venture Highway. 
• In 2019, Facebook invested in Meesho which would become the first time the company invested in an Indian startup. Meesho also obtained $125 million in a Series D funding round led by Naspers.
• In 2021, Meesho raised its valuation to $2.1 billion after raising $300 million led by Softbank Vision Fund 2. Facebook, Shunwei Capital, and other investors also participated. 

Editor’s Note