Meeshoan Indian e-commerce rival to Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart is set to launch a roughly $606 million IPO marked by contract sales from early backers and no sales from big names like SoftBank and Prosus, signaling investor confidence in India’s booming online retail market at a time when tech stocks have been global.
The ten-year-old startup plans to price its shares at ₹105-111 each, raising ₹42.50 billion (about $475 million) in new capital and a small balance through secondary sales, giving Meesho a post-issue valuation of about ₹501 billion (about $5.60 billion). The startup was last valued at around $5 billion in private markets in 2021.
Meesho is set to become India’s first major horizontal e-commerce platform to go public, with rival Flipkart expected to IPO next year and Amazon is reportedly exploring a possible spin-off of its operations in India, possibly for future importation.
Some of Meesho’s early shareholders are selling in the IPO, with Elevation Capital offloading just over 4% of its stake, Sequoia Capital spin-off Peak XV Partners selling about 3% and Y Combinator capping off about 14% per ad (PDF). The biggest backers – including SoftBank, Prosus and Fidelity – are not selling shares.
Meesho’s offer-for-sale portion fell about 40% from a draft prospectus filed in October to 105.5 million shares, worth ₹11.7 billion (about $131 million) at the top of the price band. Co-founders Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Kumar, however, are selling more than they had planned in the draft prospectus, with their combined offering rising to 32 million shares from about 23.5 million earlier, helping to dilute other shareholders’ holdings.
Founded in 2015, Meesho began as a social commerce platform targeting first-time online shoppers via WhatsApp before growing into a full-fledged marketplace. It has since carved out a fast-growing niche with a low-cost model tailored to India’s price-sensitive consumers and small merchants — an approach that has increasingly pressured larger rivals Amazon and Flipkart. The Bengaluru-based company uses a commission model, earning primarily from logistics fees, advertisements and other services, while charging commissions on products sold through its separate Meesho Mall channel.
Meesho reported revenue of ₹55.78 billion (about $624.0 million) for the six months ended Sept. 30, up from ₹43.11 billion (about $482.0 million) a year earlier, according to its prospectus. Net merchandise value rose 44% year-on-year to ₹191.94 billion (about $2.15 billion). But its losses widened, with Meesho posting a restated pre-tax loss of ₹4.33 billion (about $48.4 million) for the September 2025 half, compared with ₹0.24 billion (about $2.7 million) a year earlier.
In the last 12 months, Meesho recorded 234.20 million transaction users — unique consumers who purchased at least one product on the platform. During the same period, the company had 706,471 annual transaction sellers, defined as sellers who received at least one order in the year.
Meesho also uses an extensive creator network for product discovery, with over 50,000 active content creators having generated at least one order through their content in the past year.
“Many Indians are only experiencing e-commerce for the first time on Meesho, and like the rest of us, over the next decade, they will be buying more and more things and more often on this platform,” Mohit Bhatnagar, managing director of Peak XV Partners, told TechCrunch. “That’s why the long-term conviction is the reason to hold as much of our share as we can hold.”
Peak XV – which first invested in Meesho in 2018 at the time of Sequoia Capital India and holds about 13% in its two vehicles – is selling about 17.38 million shares in the IPO.
Meesho has positioned itself as a value-focused platform – unlike Amazon and Flipkart, which it sees as convenience-driven players. In this regard, the company compares itself to other value-based marketplaces such as Pinduoduo in China, Shopee in Southeast Asia and Mercado Libre in Latin America.
“If you look at the value-focused bucket, here, you’re trying to appeal to mass-market consumers who sell all kinds of products and categories in a marketplace business model, which tends to be lightweight,” Aatrey told reporters during Meesho’s press conference on Friday. “And the reason people are coming back is because they want access to more and more options with the value proposition of an affordable price.”
Meesho also sees the IPO improving its ability to attract talent and building trust across its broader ecosystem, CFO Dhiresh Bansal told TechCrunch. He said an IPO strengthens the company’s brand with job candidates – including those from large tech companies – and has a positive effect on consumers, vendors and logistics partners, strengthening Meesho’s governance standards.
The IPO will open for public subscription on December 3, with the anchor book scheduled for December 2. About 75% of the offering is reserved for qualified institutional buyers, 10% for retail investors and 15% for non-institutional investors.
SoftBank did not respond to a request for comment.
