Facebook Makes Its First Indian Start-up Investment With Meesho

Saanvi Araav - Jun 28, 2019

With Meesho a platform that enables Indian entrepreneurs to establish online businesses via social channels, Facebook has made its first investment in Indian startups.

On June 13, social media giant Facebook has announced its investment in Meesho which is a new platform allowing entrepreneurs in India to establish their own online businesses through social channels. Facebook representatives said that they would only take up a small stake in Meesho as a conversation starter. However, they refused to give any financial details.

In fact, it is the first investment of Facebook in an Indian start-up, though it acquired a Bengaluru startup back in 2014.

Messco came around in 2015. It is one of the fastest growing commerce social platforms in India. The central concept of Meesho is to provide independent and small entrepreneurs with tools and products to maintain, start, and develop their businesses. At the moment, this startup has successfully raised about $65 million dollars in three funding rounds from investors such as Shunwei Capital, Sequoia India, Y Combinator and SAIF Partners.

Meesho Product — Meesho is one of the fastest growing commerce social platforms in India.

Meesho facilitates the innovative three ways marketplace which allows SMBs, micro-entrepreneurs, and resellers around India to contact buyers via social media.

Ajit Mohan (managing director and vice president of Facebook India) said that they love what Meesho is doing, utilizing the online communal power to enlarge the economic opportunity for all Indians.

At the time of this article, Meesho has around 1 million resellers and a vast user base of regional language.

On Meesho's platform, a reseller will make 10-20% commission per transaction. Some names in that space are Ezmall, Glowroad, and Shop101.

Hqdefault — On Meesho's platform, a reseller will make 10-20% commission per transaction

In fact, this interest of Facebook in digital commerce comes after the entry of Reliance Industries. They have entered the e-commerce hybrid ecosystem with multiple acquisitions of rural start-ups like C-Square(software firm), Grab ( logistics company), Reverie Language Technologies(vernacular LAS platform). Plus some other investments of the company are including EasyGovt (services/schemes aggregator). There are also other investment examples like Haptik (AI start-up), SankhyaSutra (simulation services), and Saavn ( music streaming).