Meesho raises $50 million in its series-C funding round

BENGALURU: Social commerce platform Meesho has raised $50 million in a series-C funding round for a valuation between $200 million and $250 million, a development reported by ET last month. The round saw new investors such as Shunwei Capital, Yuri Milner’s DST Partners and RPS Ventures, a fund set up by SoftBank executive Kabir Mishra. Existing investors Sequoia India, SAIF Partners, Venture Highway and Y Combinator also invested in this round.

Meesho sees housewives, entrepreneurs, students, teachers, build their businesses through its platform who then promote their online businesses using WhatsApp, Facebook and other social media channels. Meesho has so far enabled over 20,00,000 social sellers across more than 500 towns, the company said. “We have created a market that was not there before,” CEO Vidit Aatrey told ET.

Meesho will use the fresh funds to hire and scale its technology team, expand into more categories from its core lifestyle focus, and scale its domestic and international supply base.

“We work with some suppliers in China and we will strengthen that base,” Aatrey said. Meesho will also invest in warehouses in the future, Aatrey said, though he did not specify a timeline.

The company has 350 employees at present. Meesho has emerged as the most-funded startup in the social ecommerce space, where it competes with the likes of Wooplr and Shop101. Meesho had raised $11.5 million in an investment round led by Sequoia India in June. Wooplr is also said to be in talks with Chinese investors to raise a new round.

“Social ecommerce is the next big thing in the ecommerce space of India. We strongly believe that Meesho’s social reselling model is highly suitable for the great number of new-to-internet buyers,” Tuck Lye Koh, CEO of Shunwei Capital said in a statement.

Meesho was founded by IITDelhi graduates Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal, and was picked by Y-Combinator in its 2016 batch.

Kabir Misra, who will join the board of the company said in a statement that Meesho was “most innovative and differentiated ecommerce platforms in India.”