How Meesho Became India’s Biggest Shopping App

Meesho’s mission was to bring Indian consumers and businesses online, especially people outside major technology hubs. Aatrey says 250 million unique consumers bought through Meesho in the prior 12 months, with close to a million sellers. He and co-founder Sanjeev Barnwal started the company after seeing that their families in smaller towns were not shopping online.

The founders’ first product, Fashion Nearby, helped local shops sell to nearby customers. They shut it down after three months when shoppers found it offered less selection than a mall and less convenience than online shopping. By observing shop owners, they later found that many were already selling through WhatsApp groups, which led them to build Meesho as a toolkit for those sellers.

Many small businesses would not pay for software, so the founders studied which users relied on Meesho most. They found online-native resellers, many of them homemakers, who needed access to suppliers for their zero-upfront-cost businesses. Meesho Supply connected resellers to products, and Aatrey says it doubled monthly for 10 months without marketing spend.

Meesho’s WhatsApp model suited a time when mobile data was expensive; at its peak in 2020, the company says 10 million sellers used it to reach around 100 million people. As data costs fell and more consumers became comfortable shopping online, the founders decided to launch a direct shopping app, despite the risk of alienating resellers. Launched on July 5, 2021, the app reached 100 million monthly active users within five months, according to Aatrey.

Aatrey sees AI as another major shift for e-commerce, particularly in making shopping easier for people who struggle with text, buttons, ratings, or online payments. Meesho is testing a voice agent called Wani, with a vision of shopping through speech and images without needing to read or type. He says the company aims to expand beyond its 250 million annual buyers toward serving a billion people.