Meesho, the Facebook-backed social commerce platform, plans to go public in early 2023. The news surfaced in a Reuters report that cited a source familiar with the matter.
According to reports, the Bengaluru-based startup is preparing itself to be ready for a listing by the end of 2022. Meesho was also considering Indian and US exchanges as potential listing destinations, it said. “Meesho is filing documents by January next year and wants to essentially be done with the IPO by the first half of 2023,” the source said as per the report. Dhiresh Bansal, Meesho’s Chief Financial Officer, is set to manage the process of ‘getting books in order and plugging any gaps in the finances.’
Meesho, founded in 2015 by IIT-Delhi grads Sanjeev Barnwal and Vidit Aatrey, is a social commerce startup that facilitates resellers on its platform to offer a variety of unbranded products. The startup is mostly targeting Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities and towns across India. The startup has attracted $1.1 billion in funding across 11 rounds. Its most recent Series F round was in October of last year when it bagged $570 million at a valuation of $4.9 billion. The round was led by marquee investors such as Fidelity Management and B Capital Group.
Earlier, in April 2021, it raised $300 million in a funding round anchored by SoftBank, with participation from Facebook, Shunwei Capital, Prosus Ventures, and Venture Highway. Meesho has now joined the elite unicorn club. Facebook made its first investment in Meesho in June of 2019, making it the tech giant’s first equity investment in an Indian startup. The company has fully capitalized on its Facebook alliance, allowing users to effortlessly resell products through Meta-owned platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
Meesho had 17.8 million users and 51 million orders every month in September of last year, according to company data. The company also announced on Twitter that it aimed to attract 100 million users by December 2022. In addition, Meesho delivers to more than 26,000 pin codes in over 4,800 Indian cities. While the report paints a positive outlook, India’s tech stocks have been on a sharp fall. In the midst of the US-Russia conflict over Ukraine, these new-age startups have taken a beating on the stock exchanges, nosediving at times and stabilizing at others. The problem has been exacerbated by a massive downturn in US public markets, as well as the potential of interest-rate hikes as well as increased volatility.
