Meesho

Alumni Q&A

How did your company get started? (i.e., How did the founders meet? How did you come up with the idea? How did you decide to be a founder?)

Meesho (from "Meri Shop," meaning "My Shop") was founded in 2015 by Vidit Aatery and Sanjeev Barnwal, who had been hostel wing mates at IIT Delhi. After graduating, Vidit worked at ITC and then InMobi, while Sanjeev worked on camera technology at Sony in Japan; they reconnected in May 2015 to start a company. Observing that most small Indian businesses sold only locally and that traditional e-commerce ignored smaller cities and lower-income consumers, they built a platform letting people resell products through their social networks via WhatsApp, and later expanded into full e-commerce; the company reports around 16 million entrepreneurs on the platform, over 10 million of them women, and a $4.9B valuation.

How did you decide to apply to Y Combinator? What was your experience applying, going through the batch, and fundraising at demo day?

The founders applied to Y Combinator after following Paul Graham's essays and wanting to learn from mentors and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. They found the application process pushed them to clarify what they were building and their unique insight, and during the batch they learned about growth and user behavior and were connected to founders such as Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear.

How have you kept in touch with the YC community and continued to use YC resources & programs since the batch ended?

The founders have stayed connected to the YC community in India and globally, becoming friends with other YC founders and regularly discussing shared challenges with them.

What's the history of your company from getting started until the present day? What were the big inflection points?

Starting in July 2015, the founders first built a hyperlocal fashion platform, handling inventory, cataloging, and deliveries themselves before pivoting to a social commerce model where resellers, mostly women, used WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram to connect suppliers and consumers. During COVID-19 the company added a direct marketplace connecting sellers and consumers, which now accounts for 80% of its business. Funding progressed from YC's 2016 summer program through a $3.1M Series A (2017), $11.5M Series B (2018), $50M Series C (2018, $200-250M valuation), a $125M round with Meta in 2019, a $300M SoftBank-led round in April 2021 (reaching $2.1B), and a $570M Series F later that year ($4.9B), totaling $1.06B raised. In 2022 the app recorded 910 million orders (about 80% from small towns), 85 million+ active listings, 140 million annual transacting users, and over 825,000 sellers, three in five of whom were new to e-commerce.

What is the core problem you are solving? Why is this a big problem? What made you decide to work on it?

The founders note that Indian e-commerce over 15 years focused on convenience-seeking customers in metros and Tier 1 cities, leaving smaller-town and lower-income users underserved. Over seven years the company built a simple e-commerce platform aimed at these users, reaching roughly 140 million annual transacting customers, and introduced measures such as zero seller commission, no seller tiers, no private labels, and no inventory-led operations to help small sellers digitize their businesses.

What is your long-term vision? If you truly succeed, what will be different about the world?

The founders aim to bring underserved, price-sensitive users and small businesses online, noting that unorganized retail accounts for an estimated 85% of India's retail sector and that only 216M of roughly 700M active internet users transact online. If successful, they expect small businesses to sell nationwide and generate employment, while consumers gain access to affordable products from across the country.