CAN MEESHO DELIVER PROFITS?

THE SMALL-TOWN WONDER HAS ACCELERATED TO NO. 3 IN INDIA'S E-COMMERCE PECKING ORDER ON THE BACK OF VC MONEY. BUT NOW, MEESHO NEEDS TO SHOW PROFITS FOR FURTHER GROWTH. IT WON'T BE EASY

- SOHINI MITTER

SANJAYBHAI SAVALIYA, a Surat-based textile manufacturer, has been selling on home-grown e-commerce platform Meesho since 2019. He’s retailed his merchandise on Amazon and Flipkart, too. But in the past two years, Meesho has come to be his preferred platform. Savaliya says Meesho’s zero-commission policy attracted him to the online marketplace at a time when Amazon’s and Flipkart’s 17-18 per cent platform fees were eating into his margins. Besides, a Meesho listing ensures he starts receiving orders within a day or two; on Flipkart and Amazon, it takes 15-20 days.

Savaliya dispatches more than 1,000 orders a day, and earns an average of ₹300 per order. In three years, he’s also earned the label of a ‘bronze seller’ on Meesho by clocking annual sales of ₹5-6 crore through his multiple seller accounts—without ever advertising on the platform. But things are changing. As Meesho ramps up its seller monetisation efforts, people like Savaliya will have to shell out more money to continuously appear on top of its home page as well as get their products displayed to the most relevant customers. Meesho recently notified sellers that it will now charge them a nominal fee per order in exchange for quicker payouts— within 24 hours instead of its usual seven days.

While this is a new stream of monetisation that Meesho has embarked upon, given its rising expenses and ballooning losses (more on that later), sellers aren’t too excited. “Saat din rukne se kuch nahi ho jayega. Kyun hum extra paisa bhare? (Nothing will change in seven days, so why should we pay extra?),” says Savaliya.