Social commerce heats up in India: Meesho closes $50 Mn led by Shunwei Capital

After raising $1.21 billion sixth fund, Shunwei Capital has led a $50 million Series C round in a major social commerce startup Meesho. The round was also participated by DST Partners and RPS Ventures,  SAIF Partners, Y Combinator, Venture Highway and Sequoia Capital.

It’s worth noting that Kabir Misra-led RPS Investment Fund also participated in the round.

With this mega-round, the Bengaluru-based company intends to build sourcing capabilities out of China and other offshore demographics.

The social commerce firm claims to have registered a growth of staggering 100x in GMV over past one year, reports Mint. Meesho claims to have  30 per cent its user base is from pure-play vernacular shoppers (i.e; non-English).

Five months ago, Meesho had raised a series B round of $11.5 million to reach 20 million homepreneurs by 2020. Prior to this, the company had also raised $3.44 million about a year ago.

SoftBank is one of the anchor limited partners (LPs) in Mishra-led RPS Investment Fund.

After a mega blockbuster IPO of only three years old China's Pinduoduo, chances of indigenous social commerce startups have prospered.

India has the potential to encourage the next 500 million Indian Internet user to transact leveraging social networks – primarily Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and ShareChat. Building e-commerce solutions for the up and coming Internet user base with democratic social touch (irrespective of languages) is a big opportunity.

Meesho competes with Shop101 and Essel Group-backed Ezymall.

Globally, social commerce has been redefined and championed by China’s Pinduoduo. Within three years of inception, it emerged as the third largest e-commerce player after Alibaba and JD. The company’s recent debut on NASDAQ valued it $28 billion and surprised many analysts with its stellar performance

With the penetration of vernacular social networks such as ShareChat, social commerce phenomenon is likely to explode in the next two-three years. It would be exciting to watch -how social commerce startups including poster boy- Meesho and Shop101 fare up in near future.