Meesho expects order volumes to go up as part of festive season sale

Bengaluru-based ecommerce company Meesho expects its daily order volume to grow between 60-70 lakh as part of its upcoming festive sales, said top executives at the company. The SoftBank-backed company saw nearly 56 lakh orders per day as part of its day-long monthly sales in July 2022. 

The company has planned two sale events ahead of Diwali, from September 23-27 and October 7-11. 

“We are focused on the low to middle income audience which lives in Tier-II cities and beyond, selling them affordable long tail of products from fashion, appliances to small electronics and accessories. For us, Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) is not the right metric for comparison,” Kirti Varun Avasarala, Chief Product Officer at Meesho told YourStory. 

Apart from the growth in the number of daily orders, the platform sees nearly 50% of customers transacting on an ecommerce app for the first time during the sale, he said.

Meesho started out in 2015 as a social commerce platform with resellers, mostly women, evangelising their platform to their local communities. In early 2021, it pivoted to a marketplace model where sellers could sell to individual customers as well as resellers. Currently, direct selling makes up 80% of the business while reseller business accounts for 20% of the business in volume terms. 

While Meesho might not be able to match up the marketing spends of horizontal ecommerce players like Amazon India or Flipkart, the platform believes in its positioning of being the one-of-a-kind offering for its target audience.

“We are the only platform where all sellers can win. we don’t compete with our own sellers on the platform…50% of sellers and 80% of selection is exclusive to Meesho. We are the only platform with a zero percent commission structure, 80% of our products are priced 15-20% cheaper than any other online platform in India,” said Utkrishta Kumar, CXO - Business at Meesho. 

He added, “Fashion, home and kitchen appliances, fashion accessories, electronic accessories make up the bulk of order volume. Even in electronics, we sell accessories and not really smartphones. That’s why our ticket sizes are different as compared to a platform that is over-indexed on high-ticket electronics items.”

The platform has also onboarded 7.72 lakh sellers for the sale, as compared to nearly 5.5 lakh sellers on the platform nearly four months back. The platform which has 127 million Monthly Active Users (MAUs) as of August 2022 expects the number to increase with the festive sales. 

Besides increasing selection in its top-selling categories, Meesho has introduced personalisation in its app, along with an interface in nearly eight languages to drive sales.

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The overall ecommerce sales in the second half of 2022 are likely to touch $11 billion according to industry experts. Both Flipkart and Amazon command over 60% of the ecommerce market, which is likely to continue through the festive season. 

(The copy was updated to reflect the correct date for the festive sales.)