Meesho sends legal notice to certain influencers over 'smear campaign'

NEW DELHI: E-commerce company Meesho has issued a legal notice to certain social media influencers alleging an orchestrated smear campaign against the company. The company’s CEO Vidit Aatrey alleged that paying influencers to peddle rumours against Meesho has been happening for the last many months.

This comes after Twitter user Ravisutanjani Kumar posted a collage of screenshots of influencers tweeting negative tweets tagging the company’s investors. Influencer Marketing is the worst thing that has happened on Social Media - Folks are getting paid thousands to defame a Startup - Tagging the company’s Investors - Fake Likes and RTs on Tweets from Paid Accounts, Kumar said in a tweet.

Following this, some start-up founders have also posted on Twitter confirming they were offered money to post negative tweets about the company. “I am shocked to see how deep this rot runs in our ecosystem,” Aatrey said in a tweet.

“But it won’t shake our confidence, rather makes us more determined towards our mission of binging Indian small business economy online,” he said. Meesho noted it will continue to monitor the situation and consider strict legal recourse against those spreading misinformation and lies about the company.

Meesho, which more than doubled its valuation last year to $5 billion, is a relatively new entrant in the Indian e-commerce ecosystem. Its rapid expansion has made it the newest rival for established e-commerce players like Flipkart and Amazon in the country.