How Meesho Became India’s Biggest Shopping App

Vidit Aatrey is the co-founder and CEO of Meesho (S16), an e-commerce platform built for mass-market India that has grown to about 1 millions sellers and 2.5 billion annual orders. Since launching in July 2021, It has become the largest shopping app on Android in India. In this fireside chat at Startup School India, Vidit sat down with YC General Partner Ankit Gupta to go over how he and his co-founder went from studying small business WhatsApp groups in Bangalore to building a full out social commerce platform. https://meesho.com Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs 00:00 - Intro 00:33 - What is Meesho? 01:56 - 250 Million Buyers a Year 02:33 - Why They Started in 2015 04:28 - Leaving Jobs to Build Something 06:19 - Talking to Small Businesses 07:42 - Version 1: Fashion Nearby (and Why It Failed) 09:00 - Getting Into YC 09:20 - The WhatsApp Discovery 11:00 - When Sellers Won't Pay You 12:20 - Finding the Power Users 13:25 - The Dropshipper Insight 14:11 - What Real PMF Feels Like 15:32 - 10 Million WhatsApp Groups 17:38 - Jio Kills Their Business Model 18:36 - The Hardest Pivot 20:35 - Number One in Five Months 21:37 - 10M to 100M Users in Five Months 22:28 - Be Rigid on Problem, Flexible on Solution 24:23 - AI as the Next Paradigm Shift 26:16 - From 250M to a Billion with Voice AI 29:17 - Advice for Founders Today

Vidit AatreyguestAnkit Guptahost

Jun 11, 202630mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

30 min read · 6,333 words

0:00 – 0:33
Intro
1. VAVidit Aatrey
  [upbeat music] It's hard. It's hard to kill your existing business and start a new one. We did it, and I, I remember it was mid of 2021. So July, fif- 5th July 2021, we launched our app.
2. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
3. VAVidit Aatrey
  We went number one in the shopping section of Android Play Store in India.
4. AGAnkit Gupta
  Wow.
5. VAVidit Aatrey
  Today is 2026. Every day since then, we've been the number one shopping app on the Android Play Store-
6. AGAnkit Gupta
  Holy crap. [laughs]
7. VAVidit Aatrey
  ... every single day. [upbeat music]
0:33 – 1:56
What is Meesho?
1. AGAnkit Gupta
  We just heard Varun's story from Giga, and one thing I was thinking about is that his story feels like the s- 10-year-forwarded version of your story in various ways. And so I'm curious to hear all the different ways that that ends up being true or not true. So maybe to begin, why don't you tell us a little bit about what Meesho is? I'm sure a lot of people here have used it, but, um, tell us a little bit about what it looks like now, and then we'll talk through the arc of how it got there.
2. VAVidit Aatrey
  Sure. So first of all, like, good to be here. Like, whenever I think about YC, it takes me back, like, 10 years ago. We were part of the Summer '16 batch. Now it's summer of 2026. I would say it's a, it's a very core part of the origin story of the company, so it's something which is close to me. So good to kind of see a lot of people who are wanna-be entrepreneurs here, and I hope they learn something. So today, Meesho is an e-commerce platform where people can come and buy across lots of categories. Our value proposition is very clear. Uh, it is very, very focused on giving the best value for money to consumers across categories, and we basically built it for mass India from day one. We really started with a very simple mission of: how do we democratize internet commerce for a billion consumers, each and every business in India? And that's where we've been at. Last 12 months, we had about 250 million consumers buying from us, close to a million sellers-
3. AGAnkit Gupta
  That's
1:56 – 2:33
250 Million Buyers a Year
1. AGAnkit Gupta
  250 million-
2. VAVidit Aatrey
  ... sold at least one product
3. AGAnkit Gupta
  ... unique people bought, 250 million-
4. VAVidit Aatrey
  Unique people who bought-
5. AGAnkit Gupta
  Wow
6. VAVidit Aatrey
  ... um, a product. [audience applauding] And, and all of them bought about 10 times a year, so two and a half billion orders per year. I think all of these numbers are by far the highest for any platform. And this 250 million is still growing at 30%-plus year on year.
7. AGAnkit Gupta
  Holy crap.
8. VAVidit Aatrey
  Right? Because you live in a population of a billion and a half people, and you still have only somewhere between 350 to 400 million people buying anything online per year. So this, there's so many people who are still not part of that ecosystem, and we're very, very focused on kind of making that
2:33 – 4:28
Why They Started in 2015
1. VAVidit Aatrey
  happen.
2. AGAnkit Gupta
  So of the people that are buying anything online, something like half of them or-
3. VAVidit Aatrey
  More than half
4. AGAnkit Gupta
  ... more than half, potentially, are buying on Meesho. Wow, that's incredible. I would love to hear a little bit about how you even got started with this. You know, you started this in 2016, you said. What was the first version of this idea? Or maybe even before you had an idea where you decided you wanted to do something, like, how did you even arrive at the thought that, "Let's do a startup"?
5. VAVidit Aatrey
  We started in 2015. Both Sanjeev and I come from small towns. I was born in Meerut. Most of my family comes from Western UP, mostly a farmer family. Sanjeev was born and brought up in Hazaribagh, in Jharkhand. And back in 2015, when we were trying to figure out... Like, first of all, we were very excited about this mobile internet wave. Both of us were two years out of college. We were like, "This is the time to build something." One thing we felt very passionate about, which was, back in 2015, if you were in Bangalore, you will see everyone around you buying stuff online.
6. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
7. VAVidit Aatrey
  And then both of us will go back to our families in Meerut and Jharkhand, and you will find no one buying online, no one selling online. And both of us will always, like, talk about this all the time, like there's something, something off, right?
8. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
9. VAVidit Aatrey
  Like, when you come to Bangalore, people feel that e-commerce has happened. I think Flipkart got sold to Walmart back then. Amazon was there. Like, lots of companies were there, and people like, "It's done."
10. AGAnkit Gupta
  Oh.
11. VAVidit Aatrey
  Like, "There's no new player who's gonna come. What is there to solve?" And both of us res- basically believe there's definitely something needed because none of our families are basically buying online.
12. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
13. VAVidit Aatrey
  So I think that was the simple reason of why we started up. So we said we have to bring everyone in India online.
14. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
15. VAVidit Aatrey
  And the beautiful thing is, 11 years forward, our business has evolved in many ways. Like, I would say we are, like, version five of what-
16. AGAnkit Gupta
  Uh-
17. VAVidit Aatrey
  ... uh, we have been, but the core mission of the company is actually
4:28 – 6:19
Leaving Jobs to Build Something
1. VAVidit Aatrey
  still the same.
2. AGAnkit Gupta
  So why don't we talk about what version one was then, right? Because I think it's actually quite different from version five. And so what was the first idea where you said, "Okay, screw it. We're gonna leave our jobs"? And what even was that process like for you guys to decide, "I'm gonna leave my job, you know, perfectly fine job I have here in Bangalore, and start working on something else"? Like, how did you and your co-founder agree to do that?
3. VAVidit Aatrey
  So I, I was in Bangalore working in this company called InMobi. So it was one of the first tech companies in Bangalore, and I one day called Sanjeev. Sanjeev used to work with Sony in Tokyo, and I called him up and said, "Hey, I think we should start up now." And there's so much tech stuff, so much is happening. Because I was part of an ad tech company, you could see all startups in the Indian, Indian ecosystem who were spending budgets on this ad tech platform and growing really fast. And I just felt that, "Hey, we have to do something. The time is now." So I called him up, and I said, "Let's-"
4. AGAnkit Gupta
  So you kind of saw that from working at the first company. You saw that, "Okay, these budgets are going up really fast."
5. VAVidit Aatrey
  Yes. I, I, I... Basically, I saw mobile internet taking off-
6. AGAnkit Gupta
  Oh
7. VAVidit Aatrey
  ... as part of that company.
8. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
9. VAVidit Aatrey
  You could basically see everything changes every month.
10. AGAnkit Gupta
  Right.
11. VAVidit Aatrey
  And so I called him up. He said, "Yeah, fine. Makes sense." He resigned next day, and one week later he came back. He came back-
12. AGAnkit Gupta
  So he moved back from Tokyo. He was in Tokyo.
13. VAVidit Aatrey
  Yes, and he was there for three years.
14. AGAnkit Gupta
  Huh.
15. VAVidit Aatrey
  And by the way, this... And I will go back to our origin story, even to college, the reason basically he did that. Both of us have been, like, close friends for a very long time. We were in the same department, same hostel, same wing. Like, we were next to each other for all four years of our, uh, college life. Did a lot of things together. The day I called him up, he said like, "Yeah, I have been thinking things are quite slow here and I want to do something more dynamic-
16. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah
17. VAVidit Aatrey
  ... and something more fast and I've been here for three years now."
18. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
19. VAVidit Aatrey
  "This looks like great, like I will come back and basically we'll try something."
6:19 – 7:42
Talking to Small Businesses
1. VAVidit Aatrey
  So I think that was basically the story. And as I said, like, we landed on that we really want to bring everyone in India, uh, be it all consumers, businesses-
2. AGAnkit Gupta
  Uh-huh
3. VAVidit Aatrey
  ... to basically the digital ecosystem.
4. AGAnkit Gupta
  Mm.
5. VAVidit Aatrey
  But how to basically get started with your first product? So we said let's just go and speak to s- few people, right? So we said who are not selling online? Mostly small businesses were not selling online.
6. AGAnkit Gupta
  Mm.
7. VAVidit Aatrey
  Brands were selling online, but small businesses who are like the largest part of the economy in India, 85% of GDP back then. So we started to go and speak to a lot of these small businesses in Bangalore.
8. AGAnkit Gupta
  Mm.
9. VAVidit Aatrey
  In HSR and Koramangala. We'll just go into these shops and ask them, "Hey, why are you not selling online?"
10. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
11. VAVidit Aatrey
  "Hey, why are you not selling online?" And everyone will give you a reason.
12. AGAnkit Gupta
  So these are like regular shops you just like showed up at the shops and asked?
13. VAVidit Aatrey
  Regular shops across categories.
14. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
15. VAVidit Aatrey
  And we realized like all these shops said, "Hey, I want to sell online, but I don't know how to find my customers online. And the people who basically buy from me are people within a certain radius of the store. I don't have a unique differentiation beyond that, but these people really like my service, really like my curation, so I really want to sell to them."
16. AGAnkit Gupta
  Mm.
17. VAVidit Aatrey
  So Sanjeev and I basically thought, "Hey, like if we help this person sell-
18. AGAnkit Gupta
  Right
19. VAVidit Aatrey
  ... to customers in this area it'll be a great business."
20. AGAnkit Gupta
  Right.
21. VAVidit Aatrey
  So we called our first version FashNear, Fashion Nearby.
22. AGAnkit Gupta
  Oh.
23. VAVidit Aatrey
  So everyone... You could, as a fashion shop, list your shop here and
7:42 – 9:00
Version 1: Fashion Nearby (and Why It Failed)
1. VAVidit Aatrey
  sell to customers locally. So we started that version. Three months later we shut that down.
2. AGAnkit Gupta
  Oh.
3. VAVidit Aatrey
  In three months.
4. AGAnkit Gupta
  Oh.
5. VAVidit Aatrey
  Um, and we had a very, very stupid learning.
6. AGAnkit Gupta
  Uh.
7. VAVidit Aatrey
  Our learning was we started this product and we never ever spoke to consumers.
8. AGAnkit Gupta
  Mm.
9. VAVidit Aatrey
  Right? Like we just spoke to sellers. We thought like the problem to solve is what the small businesses tell us, but we never spoke to consumers because-
10. AGAnkit Gupta
  So y- y- you only understood one side of the market really well basically.
11. VAVidit Aatrey
  Yes. It's like the most newest mistake you can make.
12. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
13. VAVidit Aatrey
  Because when we started to basically push our app and asking consumers to buy they will say, "This is the worst of both worlds."
14. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
15. VAVidit Aatrey
  "When I go to a mall I can touch and feel the product, try the product. When I go online I get all the selection. You are giving me a limited selection of people in my locality and I can't even touch and feel the product."
16. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
17. VAVidit Aatrey
  Right? So it's, it's worse than a mall, worse than e-commerce. And we said, "Yeah, it makes sense."
18. AGAnkit Gupta
  Mm.
19. VAVidit Aatrey
  It's a horrible thing to do. We said we should have done this before. But I think the, the journey has been this, right? Like you sometimes have a cool learning and sometimes you have these stupid learnings, but you keep evolving your product. I feel good about one thing, that we did not spend a year or two on that idea.
20. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
21. VAVidit Aatrey
  We basically shut it down in three months. We built our app-
22. AGAnkit Gupta
  Right
23. VAVidit Aatrey
  ... got like hundreds of customers to try the product and we very, very, very soon realized it doesn't work and we shut it down and moved to the next version.
9:00 – 9:20
Getting Into YC
1. AGAnkit Gupta
  Oh. And was... At this point had you already gotten into YC or did that happen later?
2. VAVidit Aatrey
  So YC happened actually a year after we started up.
3. AGAnkit Gupta
  Okay, yeah.
4. VAVidit Aatrey
  So with the second product which is-
5. AGAnkit Gupta
  Uh-huh.
6. VAVidit Aatrey
  So first product was called FashNear. The second pers- product was called Meesho but it was different than what we eventually got product market fit with.
9:20 – 11:00
The WhatsApp Discovery
1. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
2. VAVidit Aatrey
  So the product then we started was like, hey, this whole local thing doesn't work. Uh, let's start a different problem. So we went back to these small businesses and we said this time we'll not ask them. We will just le- sit, sit in these shops and see what the problems are. We want to observe a lot more than like speaking to them because they... most of them articulate problems based on their understanding.
3. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
4. VAVidit Aatrey
  It may not be the right thing to do.
5. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
6. VAVidit Aatrey
  So we would just go sit in these shops morning to evening. Many of these people were really, really nice to us. And we discovered one behavior. We discovered a behavior that a lot of these shops, even though they will say they are not online but they were online.
7. AGAnkit Gupta
  Oh.
8. VAVidit Aatrey
  They used to have a WhatsApp group.
9. AGAnkit Gupta
  Ah.
10. VAVidit Aatrey
  So whenever someone comes and buys from a shop, at the end they will take a What- phone number and say, "Hey, I will add you to a WhatsApp group and I'll keep adding all the new products I have in my shop here."
11. AGAnkit Gupta
  So they were basically sell- they had this like very s- simplified version of an e-commerce flow where it's just like a WhatsApp group they would send stuff on.
12. VAVidit Aatrey
  Absolutely.
13. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
14. VAVidit Aatrey
  It's easier m- to manage for them. It's low friction for the consumer.
15. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
16. VAVidit Aatrey
  So basically WhatsApp group was the online shop.
17. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
18. VAVidit Aatrey
  So we said this looks cool.
19. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
20. VAVidit Aatrey
  And we've been trying to kind of get these to a shop format. Maybe in India WhatsApp is gonna be the shop and you have to make this better solve problems around this. So we started to go deep and we realized there were two, three big problems. Collecting payments for stuff on WhatsApp, uh, updating inventory. Like many times people place an order on WhatsApp and by then the product is gone.
21. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
22. VAVidit Aatrey
  So all those things.
23. AGAnkit Gupta
  Mm.
24. VAVidit Aatrey
  So that was Meesho. Meesho meant Meri shop. My shop.
25. AGAnkit Gupta
  Ah, nice.
26. VAVidit Aatrey
  So we wanted to give a shop. So it's... So that's the first product we built and we went to YC with that product and our goal was like how do we make everyone, every business in India an online shop on WhatsA- on WhatsApp?
11:00 – 12:20
When Sellers Won't Pay You
1. VAVidit Aatrey
  So we did that for a year. We went to YC, came back.
2. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
3. VAVidit Aatrey
  And we were short of money. We could not raise our next round. And the problem was in India not a lot of small businesses are willing to pay you for software.
4. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
5. VAVidit Aatrey
  So even they were using a sh- a software to run their shop on WhatsApp, manage payment, this and that. They're like, "Hey, no, no. The... If you charge me for this maybe I can manage the way I was doing it earlier."
6. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
7. VAVidit Aatrey
  Um, so we said like, "I don't know if we can mak- really make revenue in this business so what do we do?" Again, at the same time we had close to a m- maybe hundreds of thousands of users using our product, hundreds of thousands of shops and there was certain segment of small business behavior-
8. AGAnkit Gupta
  So, so, so you, you already are at hundreds of thousands of people using... hundred of thousands of shops and users at this point.
9. VAVidit Aatrey
  Yes.
10. AGAnkit Gupta
  Okay.
11. VAVidit Aatrey
  To run their business on WhatsApp.
12. AGAnkit Gupta
  So like one way to look at that would've been like, oh, we already have product market fit. Hundreds of thousands of people want it but, but you're saying that you couldn't scale it up another 10X basically because even at that point not enough people were willing to pay for it to do that.
13. VAVidit Aatrey
  So yes, that's true. I would say also there were hundred and thousands of people who are doing this but they're not the most active. And, um, and that's where we're gonna come to the insight that we tried to find people who were- are the most active here.
14. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
15. VAVidit Aatrey
  And
12:20 – 13:25
Finding the Power Users
1. VAVidit Aatrey
  we found a very different profile of businesses who are the most active on our product. These were online native businesses. They don't have an offline shop.
2. AGAnkit Gupta
  Oh.
3. VAVidit Aatrey
  And they were using our product to sell on WhatsApp groups only.
4. AGAnkit Gupta
  Oh, interesting. So they-
5. VAVidit Aatrey
  And they were dropshippers
6. AGAnkit Gupta
  ... they don't have the physical s- Okay. Uh-
7. VAVidit Aatrey
  They were dropshippers.
8. AGAnkit Gupta
  Uh.
9. VAVidit Aatrey
  Um, in our language they were resellers, how they call themselves in India.
10. AGAnkit Gupta
  Uh.
11. VAVidit Aatrey
  So they were dropshippers, and they were using a product day in, day out. Whereas when you see an offline person, they will use it for a few days. It looks good to have an offline shop, but then who will go and update an inventory every day? Collecting a payment. Okay, fine, I'll collect cash. So a lot of people revert back- revert back to the old behaviors because, like, using an online tool and making that big change sometimes can feel overwhelming.
12. AGAnkit Gupta
  Right.
13. VAVidit Aatrey
  And if my online business is a smaller share of the business, should I even do it? Right? Like-
14. AGAnkit Gupta
  Totally
15. VAVidit Aatrey
  ... if my offline business is bigger, they would not change. But what happened, all of these users who are online native, they were the power users of our product.
16. AGAnkit Gupta
  Huh. Okay, so you found people who really loved it.
17. VAVidit Aatrey
  Yes.
18. AGAnkit Gupta
  Uh.
19. VAVidit Aatrey
  So we said we have to make money from them.
20. AGAnkit Gupta
  Huh.
13:25 – 14:11
The Dropshipper Insight
1. VAVidit Aatrey
  Because no one else is gonna pay us monies. We have to make money from them. So then again, Sanjeev and I started doing the same thing. We will go to their house, and they'll be spread across Bangalore and sometimes outside, and we'll ask them, "Tell me, like, how you run this business so we figure out the problems." And the biggest problem we figured out for them is many of them were w- like, most of them were women, like homemakers who wanted to start a business of their own. And the reason they became a dropshipper is because dropshipper is a zero upfront cost business. You don't have to buy inventory and sell.
2. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
3. VAVidit Aatrey
  Right? You connect with suppliers who will directly ship to-
4. AGAnkit Gupta
  Right
5. VAVidit Aatrey
  ... consumers. And we said, "Look, s- their biggest problem is getting access to these suppliers and supply, so can we build that product?" And then we built a new app called Meesho Supply.
14:11 – 15:32
What Real PMF Feels Like
1. VAVidit Aatrey
  It was listed as separate app on the Play Store, Meesho Supply, where these users could get access to supply from us and then start selling. And we saw that product, like, grew, like some- nothing that we've seen before. I think then-
2. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah
3. VAVidit Aatrey
  ... I understood what d- what does PMF mean.
4. AGAnkit Gupta
  Right.
5. VAVidit Aatrey
  Like unless you see product market fit you never know what product market fit-
6. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit about what that felt like? Like whatever metrics you feel comfortable sharing-
7. VAVidit Aatrey
  So-
8. AGAnkit Gupta
  ... and what it felt like.
9. VAVidit Aatrey
  Yeah. So for the next 10 months we spent zero rupees on marketing ever because-
10. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah
11. VAVidit Aatrey
  ... we did not have money. As I said, like money was the biggest constraint we had.
12. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
13. VAVidit Aatrey
  So we never had money until we get to Series A.
14. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
15. VAVidit Aatrey
  We doubled every single month. So organic discovery-
16. AGAnkit Gupta
  Every month doubled. Wow
17. VAVidit Aatrey
  ... and, like, very high retention.
18. AGAnkit Gupta
  Wow.
19. VAVidit Aatrey
  And it's like people coming to your app, and they keep complaining you don't have this feature, you don't have that feature, and they still use your app like 15 or 20 times a day.
20. AGAnkit Gupta
  Wow. Yeah.
21. VAVidit Aatrey
  Because you're solving such a core pain point for them that they're investing their time in improving your product.
22. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
23. VAVidit Aatrey
  Giving you feedback. So I think then Sanjeev and I said, "This looks like product market fit."
24. AGAnkit Gupta
  Right.
25. VAVidit Aatrey
  Like something that we have not seen before. So we shut down our first app called Meesho.
26. AGAnkit Gupta
  Wow.
27. VAVidit Aatrey
  Rebranded the Meesho Supply app into Meesho and basically that became a product. It was a social commerce product where anyone could become a Meesho entrepreneur/dropshipper-
28. AGAnkit Gupta
  Uh
29. VAVidit Aatrey
  ... run a WhatsApp group and sell products to consumers.
15:32 – 17:38
10 Million WhatsApp Groups
1. AGAnkit Gupta
  So you basically became ... Your first evolution was from being this toolkit for sellers to basically a full supplier for sellers. You, you are giving them a business in a box essentially built on WhatsApp. Okay, so this is now like 2019 or 2020, right? Something like that. I, I recall you've told me that once COVID happens a few big things change. So tell us a little bit about what this was like at the peak of this product, and then what happens in the few years after that.
2. VAVidit Aatrey
  Yeah. So if I zoom out just to kind of paint a big picture so you understand why was this happening. The consumer problem was that this is 2016. Cost of data in India was very high. So-
3. AGAnkit Gupta
  Like of cellular data on your phone.
4. VAVidit Aatrey
  Yes.
5. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
6. VAVidit Aatrey
  And all shopping apps are image-heavy and hence consume a lot of data. So if you go there and you start browsing, you'll keep consuming data and you'll keep getting this ... In India you used to get a message from Airtel or Vodafone that one rupee deducted, 50 paisa deducted and a lot of these consumers will they just uninstall the app and not use it ever again because they feel it's consuming so much money.
7. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
8. VAVidit Aatrey
  Whereas on WhatsApp you decide to choose when you wanna download an image.
9. AGAnkit Gupta
  Uh.
10. VAVidit Aatrey
  Most of it is text. It's very, very efficient.
11. AGAnkit Gupta
  Right.
12. VAVidit Aatrey
  Mostly WhatsApp downsizes a lot of these to keep it very, very low data consuming. So a lot of them were buying on WhatsApp but would not download an app. And we realized, like you can really go really deep into the country. People who are not buying anything online would want to try buying online if you help them buy on WhatsApp.
13. AGAnkit Gupta
  So WhatsApp had real distribution advantage over anything else in this era.
14. VAVidit Aatrey
  Absolutely. So we say let's just go big on this. So we got to this product in 2016 and the next five years we are committed on this. In 2020, peak 2020 we had 10 million WhatsApp groups in India running-
15. AGAnkit Gupta
  Holy crap
16. VAVidit Aatrey
  ... for the sole purpose of buying products from Meesho.
17. AGAnkit Gupta
  So, so that's not just 10- that's not 10 million buyers, that's 10 million sellers. There are 10 million entrepreneurs-
18. VAVidit Aatrey
  10 million sellers. Absolutely.
19. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah. That's insane.
20. VAVidit Aatrey
  There were 10 million Meesho entrepreneurs.
21. AGAnkit Gupta
  And then, then they must be selling to 100 million people or more.
17:38 – 18:36
Jio Kills Their Business Model
1. VAVidit Aatrey
  So and by the way we believe that number is 100 million because then what happened in 2020 we said the same premise doesn't hold anymore. The problem we were solving of data being expensive was not there anymore. Uh, Jio happened, cost of data went to zero and with pandemic a lot of people were forced to learn how to buy online because they are stuck at home. So we, we realized that, hey, if you don't move consumers to our own app we'll eventually lose them to someone else.
2. AGAnkit Gupta
  So there's earthshaking paradigm shift which is that, okay, data goes to zero. Like not that many people necessarily may have felt the impact of that. For most people here it was just like, "Oh great, data is now cheaper." But for your business that's now a fundamental threat to your original business.
3. VAVidit Aatrey
  Absolutely.
4. AGAnkit Gupta
  Like tell us what your psychology in that moment was because right now you have a business with 10 million sellers on it, many of whom are paying you a lot of money. You're presumably making a lot of money and you're like, "Okay, I think we have to-" Abandon this, basically. Uh, how do you, how do you decide that, and what do you decide to do with that?
18:36 – 20:35
The Hardest Pivot
1. VAVidit Aatrey
  So I think it was a, it was very interesting time period in the company, um, because... And on the board as well. Like, a lot of our investors, we were already unicorn then, so we had raised significant amount of money.
2. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
3. VAVidit Aatrey
  A lot of investors were on the board, and they were like, "Can we do this as an experiment?"
4. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
5. VAVidit Aatrey
  "Can we see it for a while?"
6. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
7. VAVidit Aatrey
  Um, and I was actually clear that you can't do this as an experiment.
8. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
9. VAVidit Aatrey
  Because the day you go to directly to consumer, all these dropshippers are gonna hate you. Because you're intermediating them and directly going to the consumer. They feel that business is gonna go away. So if you do this as an experiment, it's like lose-lose.
10. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
11. VAVidit Aatrey
  You will not get the consumers, and you will lose all these WhatsApp group owners, and you have nothing else left.
12. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yes.
13. VAVidit Aatrey
  So you have to commit to this direction. But I think the, the big reason we had conviction that this is the right thing to do is actually the same reason we had conviction before this in changing our business. We went and spoke to consumers.
14. AGAnkit Gupta
  Mm.
15. VAVidit Aatrey
  So Sanjeev and I and actually a lot of people in our team, they started to go on the ground, met a lot of consumers, and they understood the, all the assumptions that we had of our consumer, all of them were going away now.
16. AGAnkit Gupta
  Oh.
17. VAVidit Aatrey
  None of them have a problem with downloading an app.
18. AGAnkit Gupta
  Oh.
19. VAVidit Aatrey
  None of them have a problem, uh, feeling that, "Hey, how do I buy? What does add to cart mean?" Like, many of them still had it in, in majority of India still has it, but a lot of that had gone away. So we were very clear that, hey, if you take a long-term view, you have to do it. There's never been a better time. Um, and the good thing was this is, like, the peak, peak of capital available in the startup ecosystem, so there were people who were willing to provide us capital if we make this shift. Because if you go consumer, for you to basically create awareness, being a consumer app is gonna take a lot of money.
20. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
21. VAVidit Aatrey
  So we said, like, "It's tough, but we will do it."
22. AGAnkit Gupta
  Mm.
23. VAVidit Aatrey
  And I'm fortunate to basically... I, I was very fortunate that we had the right team and the right investors-
24. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah
25. VAVidit Aatrey
  ... who were basically, who took the right long-term view and said, "This makes sense.
20:35 – 21:37
Number One in Five Months
1. VAVidit Aatrey
  This will be a much larger opportunity if we do this. It's a bit risky, but if you don't do it, who else will?"
2. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
3. VAVidit Aatrey
  And actually, there were a lot of other companies who were playing, who had a similar product to us back then in 2021.
4. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
5. VAVidit Aatrey
  And none of them ever pivoted.
6. AGAnkit Gupta
  Huh.
7. VAVidit Aatrey
  And none of them are known anymore. Most all of them have shut down.
8. AGAnkit Gupta
  Oh.
9. VAVidit Aatrey
  They got acquired or shut down.
10. AGAnkit Gupta
  They had some-
11. VAVidit Aatrey
  Uh
12. AGAnkit Gupta
  ... kind of, like, selling on WhatsApp type of thing.
13. VAVidit Aatrey
  Yes.
14. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
15. VAVidit Aatrey
  Because a lot of our clones had come up, so they're running that business. But as I said, it's hard. It's hard to kill your existing business and start a new one. We did it, and I, I remember it was mid of 2021. So July, fif- fifth July 2021, we launched our app.
16. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
17. VAVidit Aatrey
  I think seventh July 2021, we went number one in the shopping section of Android Play Store in India.
18. AGAnkit Gupta
  Wow.
19. VAVidit Aatrey
  Today is 2026. Every day since then, we've been the number one shopping app on the Android Play Store.
20. AGAnkit Gupta
  Holy crap. [laughs]
21. VAVidit Aatrey
  Every single day.
22. AGAnkit Gupta
  [laughs]
23. VAVidit Aatrey
  Right? Like, you'll never go to Android and find someone else.
24. AGAnkit Gupta
  That's awesome.
21:37 – 22:28
10M to 100M Users in Five Months
1. VAVidit Aatrey
  And just, um, we used to have 10 million users at this head of our app-
2. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah
3. VAVidit Aatrey
  ... which was built for these social sellers.
4. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
5. VAVidit Aatrey
  Five months later, we had 100 million MAU.
6. AGAnkit Gupta
  Wow.
7. VAVidit Aatrey
  So 100 million consumers were coming to our app. So that's why I believe that about 100 million people were buying or at least viewing our product via this because all of them moved here in just five months. And, and I think now when you look back and say that's the best decision made.
8. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
9. VAVidit Aatrey
  Like, if we had not done it, like, I don't think we would be here today. I would not be here today. The business would not exist. But the reason we had conviction that we will not fail is because we are so to close to consumers. And I would say as a consumer company, that's the most important skill you need to have.
10. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
11. VAVidit Aatrey
  You have to be the closest to your consumer. You need to know things that none of your competition, none of the people in the ecosystem know about them. So you can take certain contrarian bets that no one else will take.
22:28 – 24:23
Be Rigid on Problem, Flexible on Solution
1. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
2. VAVidit Aatrey
  And, and I think that's what we did. It eventually worked out.
3. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
4. VAVidit Aatrey
  Um, many things don't work out. Like, it could have been that we do this and something goes wrong. Fortunately, in this case, it worked out. So that's why I said, like, it's... We've had many versions-
5. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah
6. VAVidit Aatrey
  ... uh, evolving product, but the same mission.
7. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
8. VAVidit Aatrey
  And internally, so we have a company values which says, "Be problem first."
9. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
10. VAVidit Aatrey
  Be very rigid with your problem and be very s- flexible with your solution.
11. AGAnkit Gupta
  Mm.
12. VAVidit Aatrey
  And I think our journey has been the same thing.
13. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
14. VAVidit Aatrey
  Even though from day one, we started with the goal of bringing all Indian consumers and businesses online.
15. AGAnkit Gupta
  Right.
16. VAVidit Aatrey
  We've been very, very flexible with the solution. Leveraging WhatsApp, right? Like, helping people create a shop. All of those things keep changing. The solutions keep changing, but you have to be very, very, I would say, like, committed to the problem that you start with.
17. AGAnkit Gupta
  I, I think the thing that really strikes me about this, and I think it's such a universal story of great companies that make it, is that for a company to survive as long as it does, you know, for 10-plus years and to make it big, you have to survive at least a few big underlying changes in how the world works, right? Some big paradigm shift h- occurs every few years. And for you guys, it was a shift that probably would've been very hard to predict that all of a sudden, essentially overnight, this baseline assumption of how your business works changes. And yeah, that customer obsession and focus allowed you guys to kind of get through it. I mean, now I guess to kind of bring it to the obvious current moment, you know, we're going through another big technology potentially disruptive moment with AI. I imagine a lot of people working in e-commerce will see it as very disruptive. I imagine you could as well. How do you think about what that means for your business and whether there'll be another huge change for your ahead or whether you can leverage it to the advantage for yourself?
24:23 – 26:16
AI as the Next Paradigm Shift
1. VAVidit Aatrey
  You're absolutely right, and I believe AI is gonna change how you run shopping online, e-commerce- Logistics. Um, every single thing I think will change, right? We're essentially a software company. Um, 70% of our headcount is in tech and product.
2. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
3. VAVidit Aatrey
  That is changing big time with AI. Um, so I, I think it's, it's the same 21 moment, uh, for us, and that's what we keep reminding internally. By the way, we keep saying that all our good decisions have been focused on the long term and managing the short term.
4. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
5. VAVidit Aatrey
  And it has to be the same thing now. Like we have to say forget what you have today. If you basically start an e-commerce app with this mission statement, what would you do?
6. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
7. VAVidit Aatrey
  Using AI. And actually we are trying to do the same thing. Like for example, we recently launched a new voice agent called Vani.
8. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
9. VAVidit Aatrey
  Right? And it came from the same conversation. When we started... I, I will by the way take a step back and even explain why. Most of our innovations that we have done as a business have been around two axis for the last 11 years. One is around accessibility. Remove the barriers so that more people try our product.
10. AGAnkit Gupta
  Right.
11. VAVidit Aatrey
  WhatsApp was in that direction. Um-
12. AGAnkit Gupta
  Right
13. VAVidit Aatrey
  ... and like we've recently gone into like content as a way to basically transact. That reduces friction. So our one axis of innovation has been around accessibility. The other axis of innovation has been around affordability. Like if you wanna make a billion people buy, all of them struggle with basically doing a lot more-
14. AGAnkit Gupta
  Right
15. VAVidit Aatrey
  ... with less budget, right? So how do you do it? And we have done that with a very different kind of logistics, the different way of how we run e-commerce, and that's why people trust us with all their purchases across categories. Accessibility, I feel, is gonna change again with AI.
16. AGAnkit Gupta
  Hmm.
26:16 – 29:17
From 250M to a Billion with Voice AI
1. VAVidit Aatrey
  Because so today we have 250 million people buy from us every year and not a billion. And I keep saying I think that 250 to a billion most likely in my opinion is gonna happen with AI. When you go to the rural areas in the country and you ask them to download your app and try, they just cannot use anything. They don't first of all understand what's written even in their own language. They don't know what does add to cart mean because there's nothing like this in the offline world. They don't understand what does a rating mean, review mean. They're always afraid if they click a button some money will get deducted from their bank account.
2. AGAnkit Gupta
  Right.
3. VAVidit Aatrey
  Extremely overwhelmed.
4. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
5. VAVidit Aatrey
  Very, very tough for them. And that's a large part of what who we have to serve going forward.
6. AGAnkit Gupta
  Right.
7. VAVidit Aatrey
  So when we started to basically test out this product, it's a voice AI product. We said we wanna build an experience where a consumer never has to read anything on the app, never has to type anything-
8. AGAnkit Gupta
  Wow
9. VAVidit Aatrey
  ... on the app, and never has to click a button.
10. AGAnkit Gupta
  So the software just becomes invisible?
11. VAVidit Aatrey
  Yes.
12. AGAnkit Gupta
  Hmm.
13. VAVidit Aatrey
  And you just have voice and images keep coming in front of you and keep going away.
14. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah.
15. VAVidit Aatrey
  And you keep saying, "Yes, I like this. I don't like this." Then you verbally say your address, and you give your OTP to basically transact and move on. You never ever do any of this. Things that feel overwhelming to people. And by the way, that's our vision now. Can you with AI create all experiences on the consumer side, all experiences on the seller side, logistics side, basically like this and reduce the barrier to access anything so much that everyone comes forward? And we are by the way right now like paranoid about this. We are like, "We have to do this before anyone else-
16. AGAnkit Gupta
  Yeah
17. VAVidit Aatrey
  ... because no one else should get to a billion people before us." So I, I believe this is like one way of how the business will change, and the product could look different. Like very soon we may not even have an app. It'll just a voice agent that could be outside-
18. AGAnkit Gupta
  Right
19. VAVidit Aatrey
  ... and you can keep using it to basically transact. So I think all businesses will change in a big way very soon.
20. AGAnkit Gupta
  Hmm.
21. VAVidit Aatrey
  Um, and you have to let go of the past baggage. What you have today doesn't matter. You have to take a long-term view and do the right thing. Even if it is disruptive in the short term, you do it. Um, and I think that's the plan.
22. AGAnkit Gupta
  I think the thing that you say that always sticks with me is how much you think about the customer as the first part of your decision-making in any of these stories, right? Like you could totally have answered that question from the standpoint of this type of technology is now possible so let's roll it out to as many people as we can versus starting with what the customer's pain is and I think that's, that's such a timeless lesson in what has let you go through all the pivots you've gone through and now get to where you are. I, I guess maybe now to wrap up, um, if you were sitting in the stage here, um, you are like a college student or a young technical person much like yourself when you were starting your company, what are some pieces of parting advice you would give to them? Like what are the things you did when you started in 2015 and '16 that you think are most relevant to people now especially in this new technological moment? Like what should they be doing?
29:17 – 30:17
Advice for Founders Today
1. VAVidit Aatrey
  I, I would say this feels to me the 2015, '16 of the new paradigm, right? 2015, '16 was when mobile internet was taking off and Sanjeev and I got excited and jumped on. I think there's never been a better time again. Like AI is very early. Everyone's unclear what's gonna happen two, three years down the line and you can have a point of view and jump in. And if I was starting today, I would doing the same thing that I did in '15, '16.
2. AGAnkit Gupta
  Hmm.
3. VAVidit Aatrey
  I will see what people are doing around me and then I'll go back to my hometown and see what people are doing there. I will find like what's not happening and I think all of those gaps can be now bridged with AI. You cannot say that people not using this tool because they don't understand, they're not tech-savvy, they don't find this useful. I think everything can be reimagined especially for a country like India where people always find this overwhelming. So I'll do the exact same thing. I just feel like the output would be very different.
4. AGAnkit Gupta
  It's incredible. I think that's a very inspiring message to leave people with. Thank you so much for joining us, Vidit. Appreciate it. [audience applauding]

Episode duration: 30:20

Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript

Transcript of episode 49L8lVe_PVo

Get more out of YouTube videos.

High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.

iOS

Android

Claude

Chrome