Social commerce platform Meesho, the first Indian startup to get Facebook investment in the form of an equity stake, said Monday it has raised $300 million in a new round of funding led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, valuing the firm at $2.1 billion.
The latest funding round saw participation from its existing investors Prosus Ventures, Facebook, Shunwei Capital, Venture Highway and Knollwood Investment.
Social commerce, or buying and selling directly through a social media platform like Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram or Twitter, is expected to grow in the next few years.
According to a joint report by consulting firm Bain & Co and venture capital firm Sequoia Capital last year, social commerce opportunity in India is pegged at $16-20 billion by 2025. That’s compared to around $2 billion last year.
Meesho will use the new fund raise to strengthen its talent pool across verticals: technology, product, and business, among others.
“We take pride at the rate of speed and the scale at which Meesho has grown, positively impacting millions of lives, and creating exponential learning along the way. With the new round of funding, we are extremely thrilled to have SoftBank onboard. We are focused on expanding our vision — from helping aspiring women entrepreneurs to creating Meesho as a single ecosystem that will enable all small businesses in India to succeed online,” said Vidit Aatrey, Founder and CEO of Meesho.
He said the company’s “new vision” was to enable 100 million small businesses to start, succeed and lead their operations online with Meesho.
The fundraise will help the company to build a platform which is pro-small businesses with policies and tools to help the smallest of sellers to list and do business on Meesho. This will empower small business owners to reach customers through all online channels.
“Globally, SoftBank has always been excited to back founders that provide unique solutions for the local market. By using the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning, Meesho has created a platform for many small business owners to sell to the next cohort of internet users. We look forward to being a part of this journey,” said Munish Varma, Managing Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers.
Over the last six years, Meesho has enabled over 13 million individual entrepreneurs to start their own online businesses with zero investment, bringing the benefits of e-commerce to more than 45 million customers in the country.
“We have been closely tracking Meesho for the last 18 months and have been impressed by its growth, daily engagement metrics, focus on unit economics and ability to create a strong team. We believe Meesho provides an efficient platform for SME suppliers and social resellers to onboard the e-commerce revolution in India and help them provide personalized experience to consumers,” said Sumer Juneja, Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers.
The company has delivered orders from over 1 lakh registered suppliers to over 26,000 pin codes in more than 4,800 cities, generating over 500 crore in income for individual entrepreneurs and serving customers in more than 4,500 Tier 2,3,4 cities.
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