Google and Meesho are reportedly in talks for Google to invest $50-$70 million in the social commerce startup which has been riding the wave in the industry over the last few months and has managed to become a unicorn in quick time.
The latest round of funding is expected to push the valuation of the company to $4.9 billion which is more than double its valuation in April when it had raised $300 million in a funding round led by SoftBank Group and which had valued the company at $2.1 billion at that time. The company has already received investment from Facebook as well and claims to have enabled 13 million entrepreneurs in India to start their online business and cater to the needs of over 45 million customers. The company seems to have hit the jackpot during the pandemic when the whole world was locked down into their homes and had to rely on online e-commerce platforms for all their purchases.
The company is likely to face a lot of competition from the giants like Amazon and Flipkart in India and hence this investment and fundraising would be useful for that effort. It plans to bring on more than 100 million entrepreneurs onboard the platform in the coming months and this would be needed to take on the giant companies that are already doing roaring business in India. The company also says that it would be using the investment to hire some of the best local talents which would help them to scale the platform and bring in more features as well. The platform had begun as a reseller platform in 2015 but it had a strong userbase among women in the country which has served as the base for its growth since then and it now seems to be primed to compete with the larger platforms.
The company also has a grocery platform which seems to be the net frontier for the e-commerce industry with Amazon and others also looking into entering the industry which has some stiff competition and also depends a lot on scale and speed for it to be profitable in the long run. Not many companies have been able to crack the grocery sector fully in this region and this renewed competition is likely to be beneficial for the users of the various platforms.
