Social commerce startup Meesho has secured $11.5 Mn (INR 77 Cr) from Sequoia Capital and SAIF Partners in a series B round. Following the latest funding round, the Bengaluru based startup’s total funding has now raised to approximately $15.2 Mn.
Meesho aims to use the fresh capital infusion to further enhance the strength of its tech platform and to increase the overall employee strength across the business. In a statement issued to the media, company’s CEO Vidit Aatrey also disclosed that they intend to enter newer product categories by end of the next quarter.
Meesho’s other high profile investors include YCombinator, Venture Highway and VH Capital. The startup in its initial days was incubated in YCombinator’s headquarter in Mountain View.
Meesho: Social commerce for small businesses
Meesho is a social commerce platform dedicated to small and independent resellers, with housewives-cum entrepreneurs being their primary target customers. The platform claims that so far more than 8 lakh resellers have benefitted from them.
Typically, these small resellers post their products ranging from fashion to kitchen products on popular social groups like Facebook and Whatsapp. However, these popular social media platforms lack the support of proper ecosystem and other essential features to help resellers to grow their business further.
Meesho aims to fill this gap by offering several features that enable resellers to launch their online shopping platform, keeping loyal customers updated with new product launches, fetching sales leads in real time and collecting instant payments through chat.
However, Meesho is not the only player that is aiming to crack this highly unregulated market. Zepo, Shopmatic and GlowRoad are some of the top startups that are trying to lure resellers on their platform. Shopmatic and GlowRoad have already raised significant amount of funding in order to grow their business.