Vidit Aatrey is the co-founder and CEO of Meesho (S16), an e-commerce platform built for mass-market India that has grown to about 1 millions sellers and 2.5 billion annual orders. Since launching in July 2021, It has become the largest shopping app on Android in India.
In this fireside chat at Startup School India, Vidit sat down with YC General Partner Ankit Gupta to go over how he and his co-founder went from studying small business WhatsApp groups in Bangalore to building a full out social commerce platform.
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00:00 – Intro
00:33 – What is Meesho?
01:56 – 250 Million Buyers a Year
02:33 – Why They Started in 2015
04:28 – Leaving Jobs to Build Something
06:19 – Talking to Small Businesses
07:42 – Version 1: Fashion Nearby (and Why It Failed)
09:00 – Getting Into YC
09:20 – The WhatsApp Discovery
11:00 – When Sellers Won’t Pay You
12:20 – Finding the Power Users
13:25 – The Dropshipper Insight
14:11 – What Real PMF Feels Like
15:32 – 10 Million WhatsApp Groups
17:38 – Jio Kills Their Business Model
18:36 – The Hardest Pivot
20:35 – Number One in Five Months
21:37 – 10M to 100M Users in Five Months
22:28 – Be Rigid on Problem, Flexible on Solution
24:23 – AI as the Next Paradigm Shift
26:16 – From 250M to a Billion with Voice AI
29:17 – Advice for Founders Today
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