According to a source, Google is in discussions to invest more than $50 million in Indian social-commerce startup Meesho. This company recently raised $570 million in financing.
According to an unnamed source, the Android-maker has not yet made the investment in Meesho.
Meesho, which counts Facebook, SoftBank and Sequoia Capital India among its earliest investors, operates a three-sided marketplace that links suppliers (manufacturers, distributors, and resellers) with customers via social media platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram. Resellers purchase listed products from suppliers and receive commission on every sale to customers.
Around 80% of the resellers on this platform are women. The startup was founded with the goal of helping women start businesses without any capital. Like many other ecommerce companies, the startup was badly affected by the pandemic in 2013. It has since fully recovered and experienced an unprecedented peak growth rate in recent months.
According to two employees of Flipkart, India's largest ecommerce company, Meesho's rapid growth has been the subject of many serious discussions.
In an interview with TechCrunch last month, Vidit Aatrey, founder of Meesho, stated that 13 million entrepreneurs and more 100,000 suppliers had used Meesho as of April. He also said that the startup has grown 3x since then.
The second-largest market for internet services in the world is at stake, with e-commerce having barely made an impact on overall retail sales. Analysts at Bernstein stated last month that the value of the social commerce market could reach $20 billion by 2025. This is an increase from $1 billion to $1.5 million last year.
More than 40 million Indian small-entrepreneurs can be empowered by social commerce. They wrote that 85% of social commerce sellers are small, offline-oriented merchants who use social channels for new growth opportunities.
Google has pledged to invest $10 million in 1India over the next few years. It has also supported Indian startups Glance, DailyHunt, and DailyHunt. YouTube purchased SimSim, a social commerce startup, in July of this year. Open, a startup that offers neobanking in Bangalore, was backed by YouTube earlier this month.
