Nowadays when everything is digitally developed, one can undoubtedly set up and launch their own startup or business by just sitting comfortably at home, that too without investing huge amounts of money. Since last decade, online business has developed significantly where e-commerce companies or businesses produce billions of dollars in monthly sales all over the world. Today, people rely more on online shopping platforms than ever since the pandemic, and even most of them make use of this opportunity to build their own online business.
In this digital world, online reselling industry is no different to that of online shopping platform. Just the difference is that it is economical to set-up an online reselling service, where the costs of creating or designing a product, managing inventory, and paying for the tools, equipments, and personnel can be cheaper this way as there is no mediator or middlemen between the supplier and the customer. This was the idea behind launching Meesho- a online reselling platform, where the platform allows anybody to set up or establish their own company without investing any money.
ALL ABOUT MEESHO-
Meesho, a online reselling platform was founded by IIT Delhi student Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal in the year 2015 with the aim to fabricate a environment where small businesses or anyone can set up their own business and trade by just sitting at home with zero investments.
“I come from a middle-class background and we’ve bought from small businesses all our lives. We wanted to bring them online. In India, there are about half a billion people who use Whats App regularly and the number of people who are buying from e-commerce platforms is still roughly about 100 million. This means that 80% of India’s population on smartphones is still not transacting online. The opportunity to bring the next e-commerce buyers online is very large,” he added,” tells Vidit Atrey
The online reselling platform, Meesho is a Bangalore based startup that mainly targets tier 2 and tier 3 towns having over 2 million resellers, and even have 20,000 suppliers from more than 500 towns. The online reselling platform works on a policy of around 10%-15%, where seller can ear money with Meesho by adding a gross margin for each and every transaction made. Being India’s largest reselling platform, Meesho app basically connects manufacturer to resellers.
Manufacturers post their select any of their products and commodities or products on the Meesho app, from where small merchants select any of their products and ultimately sells it to people via other social media networks like Whats App, Facebook, and Instagram. Clothing, Accessories, furniture, utensils, cosmetics and may more are mainly the products that manufacturer list on the Meesho app.
HOW DID IT ALL STARTED-
In the year 2015, initially Meesho was the given the name as FASHNEAR that mainly worked with fashion related goods and products that enabled customers to buy clothes and fashion accessories from the local shops. Local shops got them registered with the FASHNEAR app, and customers ordering from these local shops and was delivered to them through their own delivery persons. “Sanjeev and I fulfilled every role during this period. We did the inventory of every shop, spending entire days taking photos of all the products and cataloging them on our app. I also worked as the delivery person in the beginning, because I wanted to hear my customer’s feedback first hand.” Vidit said speaking about FASHNEAR’s initial days .
Unfortunately, the duo noticed some major drawbacks in the FASHNEAR business model, that was the customers were not much interested in buying clothes from local shops and even the shop owner needed to scale up their sells by selling their products in different corners of the country, not just by selling locally. These issues made Vidit and Sanjeev to rename FASHNEAR to ‘Meesho’ by the end of 2015. Meesho refers to “Meri Shop” or Apni Dukan in hindi that clearly justifies the services it offers.
MEESHO BUSINESS AND REVENUE MODEL-
As the Meesho app involves reseller, that act as the middlemen between the manufacturer and the consumer so it can’t be said to be a D2C business model and the D2C business model directly sell the products to it consumers. Meesho is a online platform that guides and help small businesses to scale up their sales and in return charge some kind of commission from the businesses.
However Meesho is a B2B business model. The commission that Meesho charges from businesses is a major source of revenue for Meesho.This commission-based business is same as of e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, Flipkart and many more. Even advertisements are a part of Meesho’s revenue. As the count of sellers on the platform is increasing, sellers who want to highlight their products in front of the resellers and customers on the platform pay a certain amount for advertising their products.
FUNDING AND INVESTORS OF MEESHO-
Meesho witnessed a total of $1.1 billion funding over the course of 11 funding rounds and it the fresh startup to get entry in the unicorn club. Recently Meesho raised $570 million funds in Series F funding round that was invested by B Capital Group.Investors like Fidelity Management and Research Company were also involved in this funding.
By Gitika Mandhana
