Rethinking India’s Ecommerce Playbook: The Rise of a True Disruptor

When we first met Vidit and Sanjeev in their small office in Bangalore, they were two young millennials brimming with ambition and an almost disarming clarity of thought. At the time, India’s ecommerce market was still shaped by a familiar script: heavy discounting, high burn, full-stack 1P traditional e-commerce retailers, and a belief that only well-funded giants could meaningfully participate.

To argue that the next wave of ecommerce would be built for the value-conscious customer buying unbranded products in non-metro India sounded contrarian and, frankly, improbable. But sitting across from them, their conviction didn’t feel naïve, it felt inevitable. Little did we know that they were about to write a chapter of Indian ecommerce that hadn’t been written yet.

A New Beginning for Indian Ecommerce

The first investment memo we ever wrote on Meesho in March 2018 began with a line that captured both the promise and the ambiguity of the opportunity. “The social sellers market in India is highly unorganized, with significant activity but no reliable way to estimate its true scale.” What none of us could have predicted is what Meesho has grown into today. Meesho now enables more than 706,000 annual transacting sellers serving over 234 million annual transacting users and 2.3 billion for the last twelve months ending September 30, 2025. Meesho’s scale has surpassed every early expectation.

In a space long dominated by global giants, Meesho has emerged as India’s true disrupter, a modern David in a market shaped by very large Goliaths.

Crafting a New Playbook 

Our journey with Meesho did not begin with easy optimism. Before meeting Vidit and Sanjeev, Peak XV had backed multiple online apparel businesses and learned challenging lessons about inventory risk, fragile margins and the high cost of acquiring customers online. 

Two strategic choices that Meesho made shaped our conviction. The first was their decision to operate a zero-inventory platform in the Apparel category where holding inventory had pushed many companies into difficult territory. That single design choice fundamentally altered the risk profile. 

The second was Meesho’s innovative approach of using WhatsApp for demand generation through resellers, many of them women building home-based businesses. This aggregated demand created a path into households that had been historically hard to reach and reshaped the CAC and LTV economics favorably.

These choices were deeply thought through and articulated with unusual clarity by Vidit and Sanjeev. Clarity is in their DNA and is the way they operate and make decisions.

Peak XV’s first investment in Meesho was $7.15 MN for 18.4% and thus started the journey to work with the company alongside world-class investors including Y Combinator, Venture Highway, Elevation Capital, Shunwei Capital, Prosus, and SoftBank. One of the most collaborative sets of investors I’ve worked with! 

Peak XV funds subsequently invested twice more in Meesho, each time with growing conviction that this was a foundational company being built for the long term. 

Meesho’s North Star: The Indian Household

At the heart of every major product and strategic choice founders held a simple belief. Indian households care deeply about value. If Meesho could serve them reliably at low average order values, it would unlock one of the largest opportunities in Indian ecommerce. Achieving this required real discipline. Meesho built frugality into its operating model using technology to scale efficiently, prioritized long-term efficiency over short-term optics, and treated this as a marathon built on economic fundamentals.

Disrupt With Discipline 

If clarity is what drew us in, innovation is what made us long-term believers.

You see it clearly in how Meesho built Valmo. Building a nationwide logistics network is capital and people intensive and takes many years. Meesho turned this on its head and took a different approach, building Valmo through small, high-ownership teams working in tight loops. 

In just a few years, Valmo has scaled from zero to handling the majority of Meesho’s shipments. The same disruptor instinct guided Meesho’s move to a zero-commission marketplace. Many believed this model could not work, but Meesho had been building a strong ads platform that allowed the company to drive more value for sellers and customers. 

The amazing thing is that Meesho is just 10 years old. Meesho’s rise from WhatsApp storefronts to the highest order volumes in Indian ecommerce captures the speed at which the right insights, discipline and innovation can compound in India’s consumption story.

The IPO is a milestone, not a destination. We, at Peak XV, feel grateful to have been partners in Meesho’s journey so far.

The real compounding begins now.

Disclaimer: This content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities or interests in any fund managed by Peak XV Partners (“Peak XV”). Any such offer or solicitation will be made only by means of a confidential private placement memorandum and other offering documents. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The performance described herein refers to specific events and market conditions that may not be repeated. No representation is being made that any investor will or is likely to achieve profits or losses similar to those shown.