Benchmarking against Amazon, this startup is going public!

According to foreign media reports, a senior executive of Indian e-commerce startup Meesho said in an interview that Meesho recently announced its first profit in history and plans to go public in the next 12-18 months.

As a startup e-commerce platform, Meesho mainly competes with Amazon and Walmart's Flipkart in the Indian e-commerce market . Its website is popular among consumers for providing niche clothing and cosmetics to small towns . According to PitchBook data, Meesho's latest valuation is close to US$7 billion.

Meesho said in a statement that it had been losing money since its founding in 2015, but finally recorded its first profit last month thanks to the support of SoftBank Group .

Meesho Chief Financial Officer Dhiresh Bansal told the public last Friday that the company's revenue in the first six months of this year exceeded US$400 million and is expected to exceed US$800 million by the end of the year.

“Since we have just turned positive , the profit is not very much , certainly in the single digits ... We intend to keep it up, ” he said, without giving specific details.

Bansal added that the company is currently planning an initial public offering (IPO) in the next 12-18 months.

Meesho , founded by Indian Institute of Technology graduates Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal, has received more than 1 billion orders in the past 12 months.

Meesho’s first profit comes as the Indian startup is struggling to raise funds as higher interest rates and a global tech winter exacerbate funding constraints.

Many Indian startups have carried out large-scale layoffs in recent months, firing thousands of employees as they aggressively cut costs in hopes of surviving the winter.

From the perspective of cross-border sellers, the rise of more and more platforms is certainly a good thing. It not only prevents a single platform from monopolizing the market, but also gives sellers more choices without having to stick to just one platform.

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