With a valuation of up to US$2.1 billion, Indian e-commerce Meesho successfully joins the unicorn club

With the rise in online shoppers, especially from tier-II cities and beyond, social commerce in India is expected to reach $ 16-20 billion in gross merchandise value by 2025, RedSeer Consulting said in a report.

According to the Times of India, Indian social commerce platform Meesho has successfully joined the unicorn club with a $300 million round of financing led by SoftBank Vision Fund . Existing investors : Porsus Ventures , Facebook , Shunwei Capital , Venture Highway and Knollwood Investment also participated in the new round of financing.

Meesho co-founders Sanjeev Barnwal and Vidit Aatrey. (Source: Meesho)

Vidit Aatrey, founder and CEO of Meesho , said that the new funds will be used to help 100 million individuals and small businesses in India sell online. In addition, another part of the financing will be used to strengthen the company's talent pool in vertical fields such as technology, products and business.

Meesho 's latest financing brings its market value to US$2.1 billion , a threefold increase from its valuation of US$700 million in 2019 , making it India's fifth unicorn company this year .

Meesho connects sellers with customers through social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram , providing services including order management , logistics management , online payments , real-time store updates , and allows businesses to attract their customers to subscribe.

As the leader in India's social commerce market, after six years of operation, Meesho claims to have more than 13 million individual entrepreneurs and more than 45 million customers in India, and says it has more than 100,000 suppliers in nearly 5,000 Indian towns , mainly engaged in trading groceries , clothing , home appliances and electronics.

Meesho's core business has grown rapidly after a few months of disruption during the lockdown. It was one of the few Indian e-commerce companies to surpass its pre-COVID-19 peak early this year. Meesho's operating revenue surged 3.8 times to around Rs 307 crore in FY2020, compared to Rs 80 crore in FY19 .

However, as of March 2020, the company's annual losses also soared to 31.54 billion rupees from 10.042 billion rupees in the previous fiscal year, an increase of 3.1 times.

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