Social Commerce Startup Meesho Is Aiming To Get Investment From Google

The tech giant Google is in talks to invest over $50 million in Facebook backed social commerce startup, Meesho. With this investment and other recent investments, Meesho’s valuation will rise to $4.9 billion. Google’s investment comes under its pledge to invest $10 billion in India. Previously, the Android maker has invested in various other Indian companies like Dailyhunt, Dunzo, and many more. 

In April this year, Meesho raised $300 million from a fundraising round led by Japan’s SoftBank Group and became a unicorn company. In September, it also raised an additional $570 million from US-based asset manager Fidelity and Eduardo Saverin’s B Capital. With Google’s investment, Meesho’s total financing to more than $900 million. 

Google’s Youtube has acquired video social commerce startup Simsim in July this year. This investment came after the announcement by Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet and Google, to allocate $10 billion India Digitization Fund.  

Founded by Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal in 2015, Meesho has pledged to help women start their businesses without making any big investments. The company has registered over 250,000 suppliers till now. Out of these suppliers, more than 100,000 suppliers have joined Meesho through initiatives like free ad credits and zero return shipping charges. 

Meesho plans to use these fresh investments to compete with India’s ecommerce giants Amazon and Flipkart by becoming a consumer-facing-ecommerce entity. Previously in an interview, Meesho’s founder Vidit Aatrey revealed that the startup had grown three times from last year. Witnessing Meesho’s rapid growth, Flipkart is also planning to enter the social commerce space with Shopsy, which has claimed that it has gained over 250,000 sellers within one month from its launch. 

According to some reports, India’s social commerce market will be worth $20 billion by 2025 and around $60-70 billion by 2030, up from $1 billion to $1.5 billion from last year. Also, it is estimated that social commerce can empower more than 40 million small and medium entrepreneurs in India. 

Now, around 85% of the sellers who use social commerce are small and offline oriented retailers. The Digital India initiative has also contributed to the massive growth in the social commerce market. Most Indians now use the internet and social media platforms, which helped these startups influence sellers to join their platforms and grow their business.