We did it!
Thrilled to announce that
@Meesho_Official
has achieved a historic milestone - profitability (EBITDA and PAT profitable) as of July 2023, making us the first horizontal e-commerce company in India to do so!
And we achieved this feat while driving a 43% growth in
My biggest lesson from IIT?
No matter how smart you are, there is someone smarter out there
No matter how hard working you are, there is someone even more hard working out there
No matter how ambitious you are, there is someone more ambitious out there
Lesson is Humility.
Super pumped to share that we’ve raised $570M in our largest round yet led by
@Fidelity
&
@BCapitalGroup
with Prosus, Softbank, & Facebook participating again! 🎉
In just 5 months, our valuation is now up >2x to $4.9B.
A young founder reached out last year and said "Quite sad that even though India tech ecosystem is almost 15 yrs old, we still have to rely on learning from US founders on Twitter because Indian founders rarely share".
So true and thats when I picked up tweeting regularly.
Super proud to announce that SoftBank Vision Fund is leading our $300M round at $2.1B valuation and partnering in our vision of enabling 100M Small Businesses in India to succeed online.
@sumerjuneja
@Sarthak_Misra1
A thread on past and future! 🧵
It's arguably been one of the most exciting ways to kickstart our week at
@Meesho_Official
!
We’re permanently adopting a Boundaryless Workplace model 💼
Meeshoites now have the power to define workplace flexibility and convenience 🥳
🧵
At a Meesho community event in Varanasi, an entrepreneur once told me that she hides her online business from her family because her father-in-law once told her "Humare itne bure din nahi aaye ki ghar ki bahu ko kaam karna pade".
A long way to go for India!
With our Work from Anywhere policy, 3 in 4 Meeshoites are now based outside Bangalore. I've been getting questions on how we executed a high-intensity event like the festive sale with a geographically dispersed team.
A thread
We shifted to our new office yesterday in Helios Tech Park, ORR, Bangalore. Our office is a celebration of our Mission, Values and Culture.
Every nook, corner and room reminds you that we are here to democratise internet commerce for India. By celebrating our diverse and unique
Great pleasure interacting with Hon'ble Karnataka CM
@BSBommai
at Davos and sharing Meesho's mission of bringing the small business economy of India online.
Truly inspired by the CM's vision for Karnataka, for startup ecosystem & for small businesses in the state.
@drashwathcn
Many founders ask me, should they send monthly updates to investors. I used to send a trailing 5 month update on key metrics to select investors pre Series A.
We signed our Series A Term Sheet w/
@ElevCap
@mukularora
couple of days after sending this email.
One chapter in and I am already mindblown.
This book is a reminder of how all of us fall for false narratives so easily, everyday.
We should be asking more questions and looking at numbers deeply.
Makes me sad to see many bright folks around me working on very small market opportunities, just because they got an idea in a shower.
90% of building a large company is picking the right market, and still many folks spend the least amount of time there.
Building career optionality is very common among the smartest folks.
But they forget that compounding only happens when you stick with something over the long run.
Meesho does millions of orders everyday but with our growing scale, we have also witnessed increase in cases of platform misuse by some resellers in sending unconsented orders to consumers.
🧵 thread on the problem and our steps in solving it
Venture Highway invested ~$100K at $1M valuation in our angel round. And they have invested in Meesho in EVERY round since, including the latest one at $2.1B valuation.
Your belief and conviction is 🤯
@neerajarora
@SamirDEL
@venturehighway
So excited to have Facebook as an investor and partner. And super optimistic about all the wonderful things we will do together. Congrats and well done
@meeshoapp
team! 🤘
Even astronauts need breaks. So do folks working on moonshot missions at
@Meesho_Official
.
For the 2nd year in a row, Meeshoites will unplug for 11 days (Oct 22-Nov 1) to Reset & Recharge after the festive season.
Work is important, well-being is priceless.
#Mentalhealth
Learned so much from you
@KTRTRS
sir tonight. And inspired by your work in attracting capital and industries to Telangana at such a large scale.
@nikhilkamathcio
being fun as always.
#WEF
#WEF2022
Had an interesting discussion with two brilliant young achievers from startup world
@nikhilkamathcio
of Zerodha and
@viditaatrey
of Meesho over dinner
Good start to Davos 2022 👍
Today is a dream come true for me - from humble beginnings in
#Trichy
to ringing the bell at
@Nasdaq
for the FreshWorks IPO. Thank you to our employees, customers, partners, and investors for believing in this dream.
#Freshworks
#IPO
#NASDAQ
Super excited to welcome Naspers onboard the Meesho rocketship.
While we celebrate this milestone, we are conscious of the responsibility it carries. Creating and enabling the next 20M micro entrepreneurs in India. And we are ready!
Eid Mubarak folks :)
Sad to see this clickbait journalism.
Fabricating stories about townhalls that never happened to “source driven” fake anecdotes of a downround.
For your own sake, be more responsible about what you write, do the legwork and don’t spread propaganda. People can see through it.
Proud moment for Sanjeev and me today, enabling second buyback for our team within 12 months. No better feeling than creating real value for your team members who have been in the trenches with you
Congrats to everyone at
@Meesho_Official
@barnwalSanjeev
Teams feel tired and demotivated not because they are working too hard, but because they don't know if the hard work is worth it.
Communicate impact with your team regularly, let them know how their work is changing the world.
Even though it has been said a million times on Twitter, I will say it again - FOCUS is the single most important thing for a startup. Figure out what is that one thing that matters the most and put everything behind it. 🎯
Paying influencers to peddle rumours against us has been happening for the last many months.
But it won't shake our confidence, rather make us more determined towards of our mission of bringing Indian small business economy online. 👊
Excited to announce our 4th ESOP Buyback worth INR 200 Crore, our biggest ever. Open to all existing as well as former Meeshoites.
This underscores our commitment to rewarding our teams, and we are pleased that despite prevailing macroeconomic conditions, we persist in
In the YC list, For company one-liners ,
I always heard, Startups referring to US companies for easy reference
'Stripe for India'
'Plaid for India'
But today I saw this 👇😀
I read a Chinese business book recently (in not-so-great translated English) and was mind-blown by the wisdom.
I wonder how much knowledge/ wisdom we are missing out on because we only read English? 🤔
Many founders don't share biz numbers with their team as they fear numbers will leak to media or competition. But the upside of this transparency with the team outweighs the risks with it. Go ahead and do it.
Many founders I know, wake up some mornings feeling they will change the world. And some mornings you feel everything can go wrong.
No matter how big the company gets, this feeling as a founder never goes away.
Meesho's Series A Deck
Back in 2016-17, Sanjeev and I had to learn from Bay Area startups around how to craft our pitch, size the biz opportunity etc. because there were no public resources on Indian startups. Thankfully thats changing now.
In this video,
@mukularora
,
How are some people able to see the future better than others?
Because they assess opportunities basis leading indicators (user needs, new technologies) instead of lagging indicators (market size, industry reports)
As part of new project proposals at Meesho, every team writes their response to the question -
"How can we achieve 90% of this impact in less than 50% of the time?"
This ritual creates crazy sense of urgency across the org. It is part of our core value - Speed over Perfection
Met someone recently who started a new daily habit to manage daily stress and anxiety: Gratitude Logging.
She writes down all the things she is grateful for, before sleeping at night and has found it to be very effective in just a few months. Amazing!
Thrilled to share that
@Meesho_Official
has made it to TIME100 Most Influential Companies 2023 list — a coveted club of companies making extraordinary impact! Huge validation of our commitment to democratize e-commerce for every single Indian.
Deep gratitude to all Meeshoites,
At IIT,
@barnwalSanjeev
and I used to dream of making it to this distinguished list one day.
Honored to be part of the
@iitdelhi
alumni awards, along with
@hitobs
🙏
I am super inspired and excited by
@_sachinbansal
's vision of transforming the financial products and services industry in India with technology.
Excited to join Navi's board and contribute to the journey.
A historic day for Meesho as we prepare to welcome non-GST sellers to our platform starting today! 🇮🇳
The Government of India's groundbreaking decision to eliminate mandatory GST registration for small e-commerce businesses to sell online marks a significant leap towards our
The story of ISRO and Vikram Sarabhai is the OG startup story of Independent India.
Big vision and dream, lack of funding, great talent motivated to make a difference and thriving against tough odds.
We need more series like Rocket Boys in India.
No scale of numbers in an excel sheet can inspire you and make you feel proud as much as meeting a user in person whose life has changed with your product.
Meesho, has announced its first-ever
#ESOP
buyback programme to the tune of $1 million. The startup falls into the rare group that has undertaken an ESOP buyback so early into its existence.
@meeshoapp
@viditaatrey
@barnwalSanjeev
@sdhskr
#MeeshoBuildingForBharat
Panipat-based Shaan Ansari, all of 19 years, had to drop out of school after pandemic brought his dad’s handloom business to a halt.
Unfazed by the challenges, Shaan is reviving family business by manufacturing doormats and selling them on Meesho
Shortcut to PMF: "Sell then Build" rather than "Build then Sell". Iterate faster. Learn faster.
We ran
@meeshoapp
on WhatsApp groups for 5 months to validate and refine our proposition, before building our app.
"I practiced for 365 days for 5 years straight because it gave me a 52 days lead a year over others. You can't win if you do things like others" - Michael Phelps is super inspiring. Fanboy moment for me
#campseq
#RaiseTheBar
Best companies are built during downturns.
@barnwalSanjeev
and I started
@Meesho_Official
in the last startup winter (2015) and we feel lucky for doing so.
We have sourced supplies for Oxygen concentrators of different sizes while we place the order using our own money. We want you to join hands in solving
#OxygenShortage
.
Donate here and we will match your contribution and use it to source OCs.
Also, do RT
I recently started spending 60 mins monthly on "Reflect on how to create more personal leverage" and this maybe is the best thing I have done in a while.
Last week, Meesho announced a corpus of INR 5 crore for COVID relief to our employees. Now we are extending the same help priority to our Entrepreneurs and Sellers — important members of the Meesho community — during this difficult time.
A thread on our efforts 🧵
"Why did Dhoni win so much? My answer is: because he didn’t obsess about winning too much, like he didn’t worry about losing too much. He focussed on the steps to get there—the process."
Good one from
@sanjaymanjrekar
The more you see experience the world, the more you realise that very few things are original.
History just keeps repeating itself, in new forms and new places.
Announcing a 10 day Meesho-wide break to allow our team members to rejuvenate after a hectic festive season.
Another decision aligned with our company value of building a people-centric workplace.
@Meesho_Official
Meesho is going on a company-wide break from November 4-14th.
Yes, you read that right. We are going to completely unplug from work — right after our busy and frenetic festive sale season, so that we are back to doing what we love — relaxed and rejuvenated. (1/2)
#Meesho