Meesho, a Bangalore-based social commerce startup, has raised $50 million investment in its new Series C funding round from China-based Shunwei Capital, DST Partners, and RPS Ventures. The firm’s existing investors Sequoia India, SAIF Partners, Venture Highway, and Y Combinator also participated in this round.
The newly raised capital will be used by the company to grow its business in India ahead. The firm is also planning to expand its presence internationally in near future. It will also spend money to offer more product categories, bringing on more suppliers, extending its supply chain and developing tools to help sellers sell better.
Vidit Aatrey, co-founder and chief executive officer of Meesho said:
We want to build out a supply base—domestically and internationally as in importing from China. On the demand side we have been focused on expanding on our user segment—from housewives about a year ago to now a considerable chunk of our users who are students and working professionals.
The social commerce firm claims to have registered a growth of 100x in GMV over past one year. It also claims to have 30 percent of its user base from pure-play vernacular shoppers. The startup claims to have registered around two million sellers to date and says that its goal is to reach 20 million by 2020. A majority 80 percent are female as the startup first targeted housewives and about one-third of the sellers are students.
The company was founded in 2015 by Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal and is currently operating as an enabler for people in India wanting to sell products using social media. It primarily focuses on WhatsApp, which has over 200 million monthly users in India.
It graduated from Y Combinator in the year 2016 and raised $3.4 million in Series A round in October last year. Earlier this year, in June, the startup bagged $11.5 million in Series B round. Currently, Meesho competes with the likes of Shop101 and Essel Group-backed Ezymall.
