By entering the space to digitise and service India’s SMBs, Meesho will go up against giants such as Reliance Industries, Amazon, Flipkart and others who are vying for a chunk of this lucrative, untapped market.
Homegrown social commerce platform Meesho on Monday announced it has raised $300 million (over Rs 2,200 crore) in a new round of funding led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, taking its valuation to $2.1 billion. Meesho said it aims to build a single digital ecosystem for 100 million small businesses and hire the best talent in the industry.
“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.
“With our new vision we will enable 100 million small businesses to start, succeed and lead their operations online with Meesho as their partner in their journey,” he said in a statement.
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.
To date, the company has delivered orders from more than 100,000 registered suppliers to over 26,000 pin codes in more than 4,800 cities, generating over 500 crores in income for individual entrepreneurs.
The current round saw participation from existing investors — Prosus Ventures, Facebook, Shunwei Capital, Venture Highway and Knollwood Investment.
“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.
“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,” added Sumer Juneja, Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers.
Source: IANS
(The story has been published from a newswire without modifications to the text. Only the heading has been changed)
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