- India’s first social trading platform has turned 1.23 lakh small business owners into lakhpatis.
Meesho has caught upAmazon andflip card in terms of user penetration in tier 2 to tier 4 cities fromIndia .- Compressed app size, explaining business videos, monthly visits to small business households is how Meesho is conquering the rural heart of India.
At age 13,
She too followed the same path to make and sell t-shirts, purses and belts on Meesho – a company that gave her a
Her company now employs more than 30 women – all under the age of 23 and from economically weaker backgrounds.
Light and fast
Social commerce app Meesho has given wings to many such young, restless, ambitious and talented entrepreneurs across the country – at least 8,000 sellers on Meesho have become crorepatis since January 2021.
As many as 1.23 lakh small business owners have become lakhpatis on Meesho.
What is driving the growth of customers and sellers of this unicorn with more than 127 million users in August 2022 alone? One trait Meesho and his salespeople have in common is speed.
“Our vision is to democratize e-commerce over the web. When the cost of trying a business online is massively reduced and onboarding occurs within 12 hours, more merchants come on board,” says
It also has features unique to small businesses and new ventures, such as the 7-day payment feature. When these sellers are paid faster, they can reinvest faster and thus pursue growth. It also helps cover some risks with the “Zero penalty” feature, which doesn’t penalize sellers for self- or automatic order cancellations, Meesho said.
Meesho’s app is also the lightest e-commerce app in India at 13.6 MB. Flipkart’s app takes up 18MB of space while Amazon needs 59MB.
“Our customers are mainly from tier 2, tier 3 and tier 4 cities of India. We are aware that customers do not always have smartphones with high data storage, so we made our app very light. To make the onboarding process easier we now offer the app in nine vernaculars,” says Agarwal.
Meesho, which is backed by Facebook and SoftBank, currently has 360 million downloads, with 175 million in the past year alone.
How does Meesho get entrepreneurs out of rural India?
Meesho’s social e-commerce team organizes monthly travel sessions with the team to the residences of their businessmen and businesswomen. It also provides a monetary initial boost to first-time merchants.
“In addition, we are offering free advertising credits worth 1,200 to all new suppliers who create 7 milestones for live catalogs within the first two weeks of their journey,” said Meesho.
To make doing business easier, the unicorn has created two activation teams dedicated to understanding how to make it easy for unskilled salespeople.
“To improve understanding and reduce friction, we have created two activation teams, both on the merchant side and the user side. There are more than 20 videos to educate about selling online. Even the stories we choose to are intended to encourage small business owners, making us friendly and approachable,” said Agarwal.
Over 35% of the merchant base from tier 4 regions
The social e-commerce app is trying to reach the rural heart of India.
More than 35% of the Meesho seller base came from tier 4 regions. In June 2022 alone, there were 23,000 seller registrations – the highest ever in level 4 cities. Mandi in Himachal Pradesh; Muzaffarnagar and Unnao in Uttar Pradesh; Buhana, Paota and Kaman in Rajasthan are popular tier 4 business spots for Meesho.
Nearly 41% of all Meesho sellers come from tier 2+ regions such as Hisar, Panipat and Tiruppur, among others.
According to a 2022 Bernstein report, the sweet spot for e-commerce growth in India is coming from tier 2 and tier 3 cities. Meesho outperforms Amazon and Flipkart when it comes to these cities, it reported.
Despite having 700,000 sellers on its platform, Amazon has yet to gain ground in a very important category in India – tier 2 and tier 3 markets.
Meesho, one of India’s fastest e-commerce companies, is looking forward to expanding its portfolio to 100 million merchants with the coming festivities. The
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