Meesho plans to go public in 12-24 months, says CEO Vidit Aatrey

Internet commerce unicorn Meesho plans to go public in the next 12 to 24 months, founder and CEO Vidit Aatrey said in an exclusive interview with Business Today TV, adding the company will focus on becoming profitable over the same period.

Speaking about the runway towards profitability, Aatrey said, "in the next one to two years, we would be cashflow positive, which means we would be adding more and more money in the bank, we have always been unit economics positive, which means since we started the company back in 2015 to today every single month we made some money product, but we never ever lost money which is the case with a lot of other companies. So because they always had positive unit economics, it's just a matter of choice for us to choose between growth and profitability."

"We don't want to invest so much in growth, we can really get close to profitability which can happen in the next one to two years. A lot of things that we are doing right now is scaling revenue in that direction. We are very confident that we can get there in the next 12 to 24 months", he added.

With an increasing number of small businesses coming onto the e-commerce bandwagon, Meesho claims to have grown five times in one year, with nearly 100 million Indians buying from the platform.

Responding to a question on the level of penetration Meesho has reached, Aatrey said, "we have just started. So, if you look at the total number of small businesses in India across all categories is about 60 to 70 million. And, if you look at our platform today, we have close to half a million of these small businesses. So, we still have got a very small percentage of the small business' economy online."

Speaking about Meesho's business model, the startup's founder said, "we have a zero-commission platform in India. So, if you look at the way globally, some of the most profitable e-commerce platforms are solely monetising or mostly monetising from advertising."

"Once you get the small businesses to come online and be successful the first time, then they're hungry, they want to grow. They want to invest in advertising, so they get more customers and more traffic. And that's how we monetise," Aatrey noted.

Talking about the profile of customers on the Meesho app, Aatrey said that small manufacturers, artisans, and weavers from across the country are resellers on its app. He further added the app has many women entrepreneurs in the age bracket of 25-45 years, who have started their businesses because of Meesho.