Meesho, an Indian e-commerce rival to Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart, is set to launch a roughly 606 million dollar IPO. This offering is marked by token sell-downs from early backers and no sales from major investors like SoftBank and Prosus. This move signals investor conviction in India’s booming online retail market, even as tech shareholders globally have been cashing out during listings.
The ten-year-old startup plans to price its shares between 105 and 111 rupees each. This will raise 42.50 billion rupees in fresh capital, with a small remainder raised through secondary sales. This gives Meesho a post-issue valuation of roughly 501 billion rupees. The startup was last valued at about 5 billion dollars in the private markets in 2021.
Meesho is set to become the first major horizontal e-commerce platform in India to go public. Rival Flipkart is expected to pursue an IPO next year, and Amazon is reportedly exploring a potential spin-off of its India operations for a future listing.
Some of Meesho’s early shareholders are selling in the IPO. Elevation Capital is offloading just over 4 percent of its stake, while Peak XV Partners is selling around 3 percent, and Y Combinator is trimming about 14 percent. Larger backers, including SoftBank, Prosus, and Fidelity, are not selling any shares.
The offer-for-sale portion has been cut by about 40 percent from the draft prospectus filed in October. It is now 105.5 million shares. However, the co-founders, Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Kumar, are selling more than they had initially planned. Their combined offer has risen to 32 million shares, helping make up for reduced participation from other shareholders.
Founded in 2015, Meesho began as a social commerce platform targeting first-time online shoppers through WhatsApp. It has since evolved into a full-fledged marketplace. The company has carved out a fast-growing niche with a low-cost model tailored to India’s price-sensitive consumers and small merchants. This approach has increasingly pressured larger rivals Amazon and Flipkart. The Bengaluru-based company uses a commission-light model, earning primarily from logistics fees, advertising, and other services.
Meesho reported revenue from operations of 55.78 billion rupees for the six months ended September 30. This is an increase from 43.11 billion rupees a year earlier. Its net merchandise value rose 44 percent year-over-year to 191.94 billion rupees. However, its losses widened. The company posted a restated loss before tax of 4.33 billion rupees for the September half-year, compared with 0.24 billion rupees a year earlier.
In the last 12 months, Meesho recorded 234.20 million transacting users. These are unique consumers who purchased at least one product on the platform. Over the same period, the company had 706,471 annual transacting sellers, defined as sellers who received at least one order in the year.
Meesho also uses a sprawling creator network for product discovery. It has more than 50,000 active content creators who generated at least one placed order through their content over the past year.
Meesho has positioned itself as a value-focused platform, unlike Amazon and Flipkart, which it sees as convenience-led players. In this respect, the company compares itself with other value-driven marketplaces such as Pinduoduo in China, Shopee in Southeast Asia, and Mercado Libre in Latin America.
The company also sees the IPO improving its ability to attract talent and strengthening confidence across its wider ecosystem. A public listing is expected to boost the company’s brand with job candidates and have a positive effect on consumers, sellers, and logistics partners by reinforcing Meesho’s governance standards.
The IPO will open for public subscription on December 3, with the anchor book scheduled for December 2. About 75 percent of the offer is reserved for qualified institutional buyers, 10 percent for retail investors, and 15 percent for non-institutional investors.