Vidit Aatrey on Building Meesho, India's Top Reselling Platform, with Adora Cheung

This is a door from YC. I'm excited to have a detox light CEO and co-founder of Meesho, which was founded in 2015, and you went through YC in 2016. So today, Meesho is probably one of the hottest startups in India, if not the hottest startup, and I'm super excited to hear about, for everyone to hear about your entrepreneurial journey, your thoughts and opinions on not just Meesho but the startup ecosystem here in India.

So thank you for being here.

Thanks so much for inviting me! I'm super excited to be on this podcast.

Yeah, so let's start off with, I love the name Meesho, which I believe is short for "meri shop," which means "my shop," and it obviously alludes to what Meesho is today. Maybe you can start off with giving us a quick background of what exactly Meesho is and give us an idea of how big you are today.

Sure! So Meesho is essentially a way for anyone—literally anyone in India—to come and start as well as grow your social store, and it could be on any social platform—WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram; tomorrow it could be something else that comes up. What has happened over the last three years is now we have close to half a million monthly active social store owners who are making some income per month. These people are selling across all possible categories; we started with fashion, moved to non-fashion lifestyle, now it's food, some travel packages, cosmetics—almost everything out there. If you want to start a store and you do not have money to start that store offline, you come and start that store on WhatsApp, Instagram, or Facebook, and we give everything that you need in the ecosystem to do so.

So, most of those people before Meesho existed, were they even able to have a business or most of them? You've enabled them to even have a business in the first place.

Yeah, so I just had some context here, right? So it's very, very common in India. Like, 90 percent of total commerce happens in these small mom-and-pop stores, and for every small shop that you see, there are 99 other people who always wanted to start a store but just never could get capital. India's not such a rich country; most people do not have access to capital. So these people who never had the opportunity to start a store came onto our platform and became entrepreneurs for the first time because we do not need them to invest any money in working capital or starting up an offline shop. You can come here, start your shop on WhatsApp, access anything from a supplier marketplace, and only when you get an order, you purchase that from the marketplace. So just taking away those barriers of entry, I would say so almost everyone who is using a shop today has become an entrepreneur because of us; they were not doing this offline—like, almost everyone!

So when you think about then the end consumer, the people buying the goods from the resellers and the new entrepreneurs, were they buying it from other people like them before? Or what do you think about, you know, like why not just, I guess, sell directly to the people themselves? Why have the middleman in the middle, I guess?

Yeah, so ninety percent of total commerce—this is 2019, right? And today, also ninety percent of total commerce happens in these small mom-and-pop stores. You will see in societies people will just put a bowl outside the house and start selling products, and most of these products are long-tail unbranded products where there is no pull of the product—people don't know about it. What value these people add to these unwanted products? Through their trust relationships, through this trust selling, they go out and push these products; they highlight what is special about it, and then people start buying. Then people start recognizing this emerging brand, right?

So selling unbranded categories through a mall has never worked out in India. It has always worked through these mom-and-pop stores. So when these unbranded products have to sell online, if you see like all big destination marketplaces in India today mostly sell brands across all categories; none of them have figured out how to sell a lot of unbranded products. But now, with these guys doing a similar thing, but not offline, but on these social channels, you have started to sell these unbranded products across all categories.

So, we just took the same value add that these guys were doing offline to the social platform and giving them all the tools that they need in this new digital world. Most of these users—consumers, I mean—have been buying the same kind of products from these small shops offline, right? They've not been going to malls; they're not been going to Amazon to buy these products.

Hmm, is there a timing aspect here? Meaning, you know, a lot of startups who grow really, really fast—some of the founders say it's due to luck, but luck is also due to, you know, good timing. So, what are the macro trends in your favor in India that allows you to grow so fast?

Today we've been super lucky, right, in many ways, right? So WhatsApp started to become very, very popular about five years ago in India, and WhatsApp is generally the first app most people use. So a lot of these people were coming online. Then, about two years ago, Jio happened. Because of Jio, a lot of these people have come online for the first time—like, record number of people in India, hundreds of millions of people in India have come online in the last two or three years.

For those who don't know what Jio is...

Yeah, so Jio is the new telco that has come and has drastically reduced the cost of data in India. Most people—a lot of people in India had phones, but they never accessed data whether it was so expensive. But two years ago, Reliance launched Jio, and now people can go online for almost no cost, right? And now these people have started coming, using Facebook, WhatsApp, Google, and now other apps, right? So, these people are coming online for the first time. They have been on the internet for just, like, a year or so.

And because of that, and a lot of these guys in smaller cities, like tier 2, tier 3, or lower parts of the country, these are the people who are coming online because of Jio, and these people weren't buying mostly unbranded products because their monthly income is generally much lower than metros—they kind of fold brands, they tend to buy more and more unbranded products. So, us starting this business exactly at the time Jio was coming big was definitely very lucky, right? UPI has become very big recently, which has enabled—which has taught a lot of people to start transacting online for the first time, which means people are now getting comfortable buying products. Like, about ten years ago, everyone in India thought that no one could buy fashion online; you want to touch and feel the product, which is not the case anymore because everyone has tried it.

People are okay with the easy returns, and they are buying again and again with a lot of trust—especially with people you know very well. So, a lot of these things have come together for us, and fortunately, we started this business at the same time we started seeing this behavior.

About three years ago, we just kept building on it.

A lot of people say in India there's a trust deficit market. Can you maybe explain for our audience what that means and how do you solve that problem in particular?

So, trust deficit is because of hundreds of reasons, right? So in India, most people do not believe in corporate companies—they don't believe in their own government; they don't believe in the original system. Court cases run for hundreds of years; they just never close. So most people believe that here, only I am looking out for myself. So who do you believe in? You believe in the community; you believe in your friends, and you believe in like someone that everyone believes in, right?

So it's very, very difficult for a new merchant to come and build trust with consumers out there. What we end up using is we leverage the trust of people in your own community who come and start these social stores and then start selling to people around them—especially in unbranded products, where you have no idea what will happen to this product after a month, right?

So, you buy, for example, some apparel, and after a month, all the color goes away, and I have a lot of these doubts. And this is a no-brand; I don't know, should I buy this or not? But when you're buying from someone in your community who you know very well, that trust deficit goes away.

And this is exactly the reason why unbranded products in the offline world about a decade ago were getting sold to these small offline shops but still in your community, right? So retaining that trust just solves for that problem.

Like India as a country is like that.

Cool! And so when you talk about who your average user is in terms of the reseller entrepreneur, what was their life before and after Meesho, and kind of how do you help them get online, essentially? How do you help them get used to selling goods online when prior, if they were even doing it, it was totally offline and maybe in person?

Correct! So, the average user—like, 90% of our users are women, and more than 80% of our users are tier 2 and tier 3. And most of these are people with no financial incomes. A lot of these are aspirational entrepreneurs—people who want to start a business but for a very long time.

I can tell you anecdotes, right? When we started this business, we spoke to a lot of people who were doing this without us—which was a big pain, by the way. But when you speak to them, it mattered to them so much. There was this lady who was saying that for the last 20 years, she goes to her husband every year and asks him, “Please give me money so I can start my boutique,” or “I can start my store selling products,” but she never got money, right?

And when she came onto the platform and we gave her everything that she needed without needing any investment on day one, she was super happy because she could fulfill that dream—that aspiration of starting that store, right?

So this is my typical user. Most of these users are people with no financial incomes in smaller cities who are looking to start a business—who are looking to do something of their own, right?

And most of these people, what we have seen over time, and just to give you some sense of our product—most of these people, because they’ve not done this business before, they come onto our platform. We spend a lot in terms of how do we train these guys.

So if you come onto our platform on day one, you will see a lot of content telling you what you should do on day one, day two, day three. Even if you don't do well, very after that, we put you in a mentorship program. We connect you with some top trainers for a month and these guys will tell you how to start a business.

So these people have never done it—these are other entrepreneurs in your systems?

Yes! Yes, these are like our top 5% of the users who want to do this because they get recognition.

Yep! So it's like you're starting your own startup ecosystem.

Yes, and Meesho—that's great! Exactly! So, these people are helping each other out.

Look, I'll give you an example. We have a Reddit-type community in our app, which is called the Meesho Community, and people come and say, “Hey, I'm a new user; I am based out of this place in India,” and “I don't know what to do to get started with this, but I really want to do this.”

And then you see like hundreds of other users coming forward and telling them what to do on day one—like how should you get your first set of 50 customers, how should you curate and bring that value out. So people start getting interested, but people start doing this; the community helps each other out.

I love the stories on what you've changed. You've obviously changed some people's lives. What is the best story for you? Who is the best user in terms of whether they're just doing a lot or they've increased their income a lot or you just changed their life so much?

So, it's just never been... I'll give you some understanding about how these women are, right? So a lot of our users are women. A lot of them are housewives. Like, 70% of our users are housewives. A lot of these women have been looking to start a business not just to make money, right, but to also get some sort of professional identity, right?

It’s very common in these women to feel that no one gives them any respect—like my husband doesn’t feel that I’m adding enough; my family doesn’t feel that I'm important enough. But now when I am known as a businesswoman in the community, people start recognizing me. I have a professional identity; I can also go out and say, “I run my business; this is what I did last year.”

So that feeling is very, very important—empowering, right? So most, like, our most impactful stories are not just about how much money this person makes; it's a lot about what were they doing before.

So we have widows who are not able to sustain, like they—their family, feed their kids, etc. There are women who are handicapped, right? So these are educated women but handicapped, so no one ever gave them jobs. So all kinds of stories are there, right?

And this is the impact which tells us that people are finding value in terms of income. Like our typical average user makes about $150 to $200 per month as income; my top 5-10% make about $400 to $500, right? But I don't think that number matters too much—it's about where were you before and how has life changed. Most of these people are anyways not doing this as the primary income for the family; most of this is secondary income for the family, which is if it is 15, 20, 30 percent of your primary income, it's significant.

Yeah, it's like getting a raise one year earlier, right? But a lot about how you empower me—what identity do you give me? People start giving me more respect is, like, much, much more important.

That's very inspiring! So, in terms of what's driven growth so far—obviously there's a timing piece; you're enabling e-commerce; you're enabling entrepreneurs to start their businesses—is there anything else specific to what you're doing internally to help you drive this growth?

So, I think we keep solving some very hard problems every six months. When we started off, we were just enabling existing guys who were doing this because we saw this behavior; a lot of people in Gujarat cannot what surrounding these WhatsApp stores even before us. They had gone out, met suppliers, figured out how to do courier; they figured out how to use tools on WhatsApp, etc.

But they were few. In like six or seven months, we onboarded a lot of them, and then we did not know what to do. And then we changed our product completely because we had to create users—like, we have to create our resellers; none of them were doing it themselves.

So we changed that, and suddenly so many people—every tier 2, tier 3 woman out there became our target customers.

And then the second thing that we did was: how can—and which is still the North Star of the company—how do we grow income per reseller every month? Which meant growing the number of categories. So we started with only ethnic fashion; over time, we just down now do everything.

Now we have even set up a supply chain from China, so you can not just access supply that exists in India but even cross borders, right? So now you can offer better variety. You can sell even more unique things; you make more money.

Then we said, “Hey, can we make enable not just housewives but other people?” Then we started going out; we onboarded students, we onboarded retired folks who are trying to make pensions. We have a lot of men who are unemployed, who do not have jobs, and they are running these shops to sell these products. So it's now practically everyone; you're basically going to eventually employ all of India!

So, as the trap that some startups get into—A lot of sort of can see when they grow too fast is a quality issue. And I heard you say something very interesting, I don't know where, but in another interview, you said you don't really want to scale customer support because it's unsustainable.

So, I'm really curious, how you balance growth and quality as you continue to grow really fast.

Correct! So it's always been a cycle, right? So you grow very fast, and then you realize you've carried so much debt around, a lot of Rob's—lot of manual things—and then you start focusing on how to improve quality.

And I think we see that cycle almost every six months, but both are right. Since last year was crazy growth for us, like we started with the number we ended with—no! Most people can't imagine how that has happened.

But during that path, if we started optimizing for quality, we would have broken down as a system. And as soon as that year ended, like the last two months post the valleys—they're nearly in season here—we just spent all our time in fixing whatever debt we had carried.

So you have to do both because if you keep scaling your customer support, if you need customer support, that means is something wrong with the product, right? So you have to go back to the drawing board and understand: why are people calling me? Right?

And then you start optimizing for, “Hey, my product is broken in these places,” and I have to solve them out. So, not just in terms of cost operations, but overhead you have, but just giving a great experience. You need to solve for these things.

And at this stage, we focus on it; we have a dedicated team within the company focusing on this. But in the early stages, we had to compromise. Sometimes we just focus on growth; sometimes it's quality.

Got it, yeah, that's great! It's like taking a step back and looking at how there’s a certain point—there's a certain bar—in which if you dip below it, then you kind of have to pause and then go fix it before going to the next level. That's great!

Alright, so you probably get this question a lot, but I'm going to ask it anyway: What if Facebook does this? Or what if Amazon? Why can’t like, why wouldn’t just Amazon or Flipkart or anyone just win this space?

Yeah, about Facebook, I just think this is one of the so many things that are going to happen in the Facebook ecosystem because people are spending so much time there. If Facebook starts doing everything, yeah, I'm sure they'll not do what they're doing right now, right?

If you look at, for example, China—like, $0.10 invest in so many use cases that are happening on WeChat because they can't do everything themselves. It's impossible and it's not in their DNA as well, right?

So you build a platform which does something; you do not want to go out and onboard to like suppliers and make sure that quality's right, but that's not you. But it doesn't seem like in there, and you can't do this every day—like you start a new business because you want to catch at all use cases. Like, the way to do it is like partnering with us.

And we do work with them very closely, right? We share what our users are telling us, what can improve, how can this platform become better in terms of enabling commerce for these people in smaller cities—we do that. But I don't think it's viable; even if they start doing it, it'll have to stop at some time because this is one of the few things that are going to happen on WhatsApp.

It's not the only thing that's gonna happen!

Yeah, in fact, it makes their product more sticky, good people are doing this, and they recognize it like we are creating new merchants for them.

Yep!

Yeah, and these people are going to come back; you're making them bigger.

Yes, curious!

Cool! So I want to take a step back and go all the way back to your college years in which I'm guessing you were starting to think about, “I want to do a startup.” So you and your co-founder met in college; you were classmates. Tell me a little bit about when did you guys know you wanted to start a startup together and what were your initial ideas?

Yes, so in college, actually, we did not think about doing a startup, okay? Alright? And in college, you were said, “Hey, we're going to go out, get a job somewhere, chill out, like, have fun, whatever,” right?

And, but we used to work on a lot of projects together. I still remember we worked on our college project that we did in the last year. We worked on certain things that we went out for, competitions; we worked together. So we knew each other very well, but that time you're not thinking about doing startups.

And it's not just us—like, this is 2008 to 2012. Starting startups was not a cool thing to do—that started after Flipkart became big around 2014-15. And after that, IITs were like, “Hey, everyone also do a startup,” so it’s a pretty cool phase.

But what happened back in 2015, like three years out of college, I was working with InMobi; Sanjeev was working with Sony in Japan. Randomly, he called me one day, saying, “Hey, I'm looking to join a company in Bombay because I want to come back to India. Can you reject that company for me?”

And I said, “Why do you want to work with them? It was a startup! If you want to work with my startup, let's do something ourselves first; if it doesn't work, then you go there,” right?

And just on that call—with no idea, nothing in mind—we agreed that, “Hey, we will do a startup.” And right from the next day, we started focusing on, “Hey, what problems can we focus on?” We created a Google spreadsheet listing all the ideas; we talked to people around us.

But that's how it was—it's all unpredictable, uncertain, no plan around it. At that time, I was planning to do an MBA—but that is no longer needed. You got your MBA!

Yes! Because I just felt like a very good friend of mine, I know I can work with Sanjeev for 400 years of my life, right? And when he’s saying that he wants to work in a startup, there was no better opportunity for me.

Yeah, in some sense, the best teams are those who knew they wanted to work together regardless of the idea, and then they just came up with the idea along the way. Good!

Alright! So you guys decided to start working together; I know I think the first idea you had was Fashiona, or was that—is that true?

Yeah, the first one you actually started working on.

So, tell me a little bit about that; you know, how did you come up with the idea? How did you figure out like it didn't work? And then the pivot into what is, I guess, the first version of Meesho that's today.

Sure! So, back in 2015, doing hyperlocal was very popular in India; like, everyone thought that almost everything will be sold on demand hyper-locally. And we thought, “Hey, everyone is working on a problem, but no one is looking at fashion,” so we said, “Let’s build hyperlocal for fashion,” and we built Fashiona. Think of it as very similar to what Swiggy is for food but just for fashion.

We did that for 4-5 months; we learned a hard lesson—it doesn't work because in fashion, fulfillment is like the third thing that is most important; the first thing is selection, which you can never have around you. But that was like the lesson that we learned.

But the good thing was, right, it became a starting point. So then we built out that marketplace; we used to go to these small shops in Bangalore and used to onboard them as suppliers, and these small shops are everywhere—in Koramangala, where we are right now, in HSR, everywhere!

And my pitch used to be that, “Hey, I’m going to take you online,” and these guys would say, “We are already online! What do you mean by that?” The answer is: “No! What’s up!”

And then you understand, like, one level deeper, what does that mean? Same, I've created WhatsApp glue of all my existing customers, whoever ever bought from me, and every time you stock comes into my store, I take photographs of all of them and post on that group saying, “Hey, these are the few products left; if you want to order, you order right now.”

So it was like leftover, yes, re-engaging with their customers on WhatsApp. And these guys were saying that they sell 30-40 percent of their total business every month on WhatsApp now.

And my brother, whose invite Finn, does make much more than that. We thought that was super exciting! And then we met a lot of other small shops and we saw the same behavior. And the good thing was no one in there knew about it, so we thought, “Hey, let’s go to the idea we should work on!”

Right? And we had learned a hard lesson with like what we were doing before; we learned like at that time we were speaking to VCs; they recommended hyperlocal, “Oh, you will get funded,” etc. This time we realized we have to do something that we believe in ourselves.

And when we had spoken to these 50-100 such suppliers offline, we were very confident, “Hey, this is going to be the next big market.” A lot of these SMEs are going to use WhatsApp, so we just built a tool—think of it as a mobile-only, India-localized version of Shopify, tailor-made for doing commerce on WhatsApp, Facebook.

And we built it out, and we started going to all these small shops and saying, “I know you sell on WhatsApp; I have used this tool, and I know you sell on WhatsApp. I’ve used to go to exhibitions, etc.” And that product started to grow very well.

Right? And with the same product, we went to IC and we raised some round—an angel round. But six months, nine months down the line—like everything changed. It was a tool which was free, so you're not making any money; it was growing. The retention used to be lower than what we expected, and then we used to speak to our users and we realized that about more than half of our total users were not the same segments that we intended this product to be for.

It was not that offline shop. A lot of them were housewives who were running their boutiques on WhatsApp. So it's—everyone is saying, “Karen, a boutique on WhatsApp,” it's called XYZ boutique—like “It's a boutique” or “Dora's boutique,” and they will create a logo and they’re selling there.

And then we understood what they were doing. Most of these women were based out of Gujarat, which is like the big manufacturing sector in India. So it's easy to access supply in that state; most of them were women based in Gujarat who were going out, getting phone numbers of these suppliers, adding them on WhatsApp, getting products from them, curating, selling it to their customers, and when they get an order, they collect money and give to the supplier, who'll ship it to the customer.

Yeah, and they’re running boutiques on WhatsApp. And you're so inspired when we made these women if everyone in India could start a shop like this, it would be very powerful!

Yeah!

So in some ways, it's cool that people were going to use it in one way, but actually there are another set of customers that are using it in another way, and that's what actually started growing—it happened by itself. Like, I don't know, by luck, by chance, but people just came, and they started using that tool to do something they never expected.

What was the point when you thought, “This is it”? Like, was there a certain metric you were tracking? Was it just growing really fast? Or was just there's a story where you're like, “Oh man, this is gonna be huge”?

So right after we discovered this, because the existing product was also working, we created two teams within the company. So Meesho was what we were doing earlier, and we created another product called Meesho Supply, and I separated a team internally.

So there used to be one room for Meesho and one room for Meesho Supply, and these guys were building out the tool so that everyone could do what these women were doing—that was Meesho Supply.

And we did this on WhatsApp! So we did not build an app this time—like, Sandy wouldn't have let me start another website. They’re already with two different apps, and they’re not going to be a big business anyway. So we started doing this on WhatsApp; we used to connect with these women and send them products based on whatever data we have.

We created a supply marketplace on the backside, had an office in Gujarat, same chick in the neck problem. I don’t know what all we did at that point in time figuring out how to get some supplier to sell, but just on WhatsApp, with no app, no website—in six months, you’re doubling every month!

Every month this was still going at the same space; the retention was lower than what we expected. We thought that I could not do two businesses. I have to choose between them and I could see this business exploding on WhatsApp.

Yeah, if I build out—I don’t know what'll happen—so we just shut it down, and we renamed Meesho Supply to Meesho and that became the only focus.

How hard was that? Because most people have a really hard time trying to let go of this one thing that's actually not doing bad; it’s actually doing fine!

So it was very, very hard—but it was not as hard because the Hudson chief—if my—I have seen so many friends around me who were just not able to pivot because it was a hard conversation with a co-founder, and the co-founder starts not believing you because the belief that means and you have is not because of what we are doing right now; it’s because we know each other for more than 10 years.

This did not matter, right? So I said—we both understood what's happening—so let's take a call. And then we convinced all the team members over time; they also came on board! Initially, everyone pushed back, “Hey, you keep changing what we are doing every six months,” right?

Even though that was course correction. Now, if you see back, it was important. If something just because you have a co-founder you trust blindly, it was easier.

Yeah! But I am very sure if I was starting this company with anyone else, I would not have been able to do these two pivots and most likely would have been done bad.

But how did you announce it? The hardest piece is probably making the decision itself, and then the other hard part is telling the whole company, “Hey, listen—the thing you signed up for, we’re actually going to do this other thing.” How did you manage that whole process?

So, first, because I was very clear—we do this for six months! It's not a small period; we did both for six months. After six months, I could see, “Okay, hey, I know we have worked on this for the last nine and a half years, right? There is sweat that has gone into this—but this is working right.”

So you have to be logical about this. If it keeps growing you will make money. And the other thing that happened at that time—we're struggling to raise money. We were one of the few companies after YC who did not raise a lot of money on demo day, right?

So we’re struggling to make money here; we were making money by charging supplies, and you have even none! So it was very clear what you have to do! By pure need! Yes! You have to do this!

Right? So everything was pointing to one direction. So then we knew that we have to do this.

This next thing was how do you get the consensus in the team that whatever you worked on for the last one and a half years is not going to be the cool business anymore. And then when we just sat around with our team, I think they understood what it took.

It took weeks! We used to come back and discuss the same thing again, and everyone will put forward, “Let’s give more time! Let’s keep investing there!” And I was thinking, “You need to focus on one thing! That's about belief! You can't do a hundred businesses—even if you want to!”

Yep, right? And over time, people came, and they came about this, and everyone agreed on the same thing. And then we started focusing on this, and even then we continued to grow very fast!

Like in just three months after we made the shift of shutting this down and just doing this because it was growing so fast! Every row was very clearly, “Hey, we made the right decision!”

Mhm! Yeah, that’s great!

So, when startups start becoming really big companies, the CEO's role changes a lot, and many times they get further away from the actual user and what they actually want. So I know you’ve told me in some private conversations some really great things that you actually do to keep in touch with the users, so I’d love you to share what you can about what you do there to make sure.

Sure! So our business is a unique business, right? So most people build products for themselves that they use themselves, right? Because they fail—they need themselves!

In our case, we are building for a different segment—like, I am not a woman; I’m not a housewife, right? And we’ve always recognized this as one of the core problems since day one. They give you the best thing to do: build a product that solves your own problem.

The second best thing to do is build a product that solves a problem for someone who can’t solve their own problem. We realize we’re solving problems for someone else; we have to be very close to them.

So since day one, every user that leaves to onboard, I used to come onto WhatsApp, and I say I’m going to do customer support for you! Any problem, you tell me, every time we’re thinking of launching a new feature, I will check with everyone what do they feel about it—just keep talking to them.

And over time, I built nations with a lot of those folks—even now, like a good number of 100 to 150, like 100, 200 people who are our top users are added on; and if something gets delayed, they still ping me.

But because of that, I get to know what's happening on-ground—you know right away all that stuff is wrong. It's very important!

Yeah! It’s like the chicken balance in the whole company—you release one bad feature because you're not using it right now; you would not get to know about it.

Yeah! But my user will come and tell me, “Hey, this is broken!” So that is very important. And I think as a whole company—it's not just me; as a whole company we have built a culture which is very, very user focused, right?

Because the day you start taking assumptions, start thinking on behalf of the user, and say, “This is how it should be,” you start doing mistakes! So all my management goes and sits in the call center every month for half a day and just listens to user calls; just understanding what they’re facing today, and everyone comes out with something new that they never thought about.

Yeah, we do something, and I think one of the very few companies out there is we do town halls for our existing employees in the company. We go out and tell them what's working well, what's not working well, what numbers did we achieve, what are we trying to do going forward, and what new things we launched.

Right?

We realize that our users, who are these store owners on these social platforms, are also the same part of the companies, our employees. So then I started doing what we call “we hear you” every month where I create a video and I talk about what kind of things we did last month, what kind of things we are planning to do, and what are the things that are not working well.

And we work on them! It's like a town hall for our users, and it has got amazing responses. Like every user comes back and responds there with, like, very big answers. What needs to change? What is not changing?

Most people love it; most people look forward to it because it's like I get to know from the company, “Okay, hey! What's happening?” Everyone—most of our users feel part of the company.

Yeah! We also do like a few other things, like one of them is most of the celebrations that happen in our office, we generally call most of our users in Bangalore to come and participate with us.

So we are having a party after maybe a funding round; we call our users who also have fun with us. So we get to talk to them about what they want.

That's coming—just staying with them! It’s all of this is just to stay close to them!

Yeah! Because if you're close to them, they'll keep telling you what are they feeling about and then you'll not make those mistakes that most people are never doing!

Yeah! That's the first thing you talked about, staying in touch with their first 100 or so users—actually, I tell a lot of founders that’s what WA and VC did because that will keep you in the loop at all times and the “we hear you”—sorry!

In hindsight, that is genius, and everyone should do that! That’s if I ever start a startup, I’m gonna steal—that’s gonna be the one!

I’m sure! I think it’s like one of the best things we have done in the last one year, yeah! And it just works amazingly well! We get so much feedback every month; every person in the company knows what our users are feeling—it's just amazing!

Yeah! And I think everyone should do it!

Yeah! So, in terms of your role, tell me a little bit how it has evolved over time. Obviously, when you had no users, you were like on the ground, being super scrappy and just building stuff and talking to users yourself.

How has that evolved over time to what you are today—which is a company of hundreds and hundreds of them? How many employees do you have?

We have 700 employees!

Yeah! So what is the difference now?

So, I would say until we got to product market fit, right, my whole job was just to figure out what the business model will be in the long term. So I was doing everything on the demand side—like I got my co-founder and another very good friend and early member of the team who was looking at a lot in the supply side.

But I was like, I have to figure out what the business model will be and doing these pivots, talking to users—just keep talking to them what's working, what's not working.

I did everything on the growth side and on the product side; we hired a first product manager after we did the series II, and we hired a second product manager after I did the series B. So I was just doing all that work because I knew it’s my responsibility to figure this out.

And after we had very clear signs that, “Hey, this is scalable; we have reached product market fit,” my job changed suddenly. You have to get the team, so that we can manage this growth.

Right? After this, my role has been just on hiring—hiring people who believe in our culture, who believe in our values, who believe in the mission that we have, like solving for people who are with the kind of users we have, and hiring them and just making sure that if we change our direction—which I don’t think is right—making it our—the course like doing course correction at times and making sure the direction of the company’s right, motivating people at all times.

But this is my work now!

Yeah, yeah! Thanks! Nothing, yeah! I missed all days— I do make many times, I like, I just go back; I still spend a lot of time with the product team— not so much other because I like it!

Like, I like understanding: what do people want more! Right? So it's like once you get a habit of doing this right, it’s very, very hard to come out of it, but you know, business needs it. I need to hire people so that we can sustain this!

Yep!

Yeah!

Whatever! As you've grown over time through your role, what are the resources here in India that you've leveraged or elsewhere to help you do well?

So I think you're the CEO and as a founder, the best way to learn is always talking to other founders, and I have seen every problem that I have is never the first problem, right? So I built a network through our investors, through our board members who have other portfolio companies.

Fortunately, I have built a good connect with a lot of the founders who are building great companies—such as Swiggy, Ola, others, right? And it’s going to them, talking to them, “Hey, this is what I am facing; did you face the same thing?”

And they would say always say “Yes!” And then you understand how did this all for it; and I think this is the best way to learn.

Like everything else, I read a lot of books—like everything that is out there related to startup founders—but all of that is not in context of what you’re doing.

A lot of those books are written outside—in there! But when you go and meet these founders, you understand what's happening.

Like even just within a YC circle, I spent like—we, me and our church, who’s the founder at clear tax, we take a stroll every Friday morning, and we discuss what are we doing, that’s all, and what is working, what is not working.

And he will tell you what is working for him and I will go and try it out in my company and vice versa, and it works fabulously well!

So I think the only way you can learn is found this speaking to other founders!

Yep!

Yeah, having a strong peer network is so important!

Yeah! Speaking of which, what's a big mistake you've made that you now that you have you're talking to lots of founders listening to this podcast that you hope they never, ever make—and yeah! What did you learn from it?

I think we made the first mistake right after we decided we want to start up. So at that time, we just kept listening to VCs. On day one we went to VCs and asked them, “What do you want to do?”

Right?

And the second thing, once we started when we see looking funding—and they said, “If you do this and you get to this metric, then we’ll fund you,” and we spend the next three months just getting to that milestone, and then we went back to them and were like, “Okay, now, now you do this, and you get to this!”

Then: Neverending!

Yeah! And then we wasted four months of our time, but it was such a big lesson. After that, I never wanted to talk to them and say, “What should I do?” because I know they don't know.

Yeah, right?

So it's the biggest mistake most first-time founders do, right? They think, “Hey, they're going to find us! Like if you just listen to them, things are gonna work out,” but it’s never the case.

You have to believe in what you're doing; you have to believe in the idea; you have to believe in the product—you don't have to make someone believe in something. You just do it for them!

Yep!

Yeah, it makes sense! This is no matter how smart they are—they’re never gonna be the expert in what you're doing, that’s for sure!

So what is the best decision you made in the early days of Meesho when looking back was super critical to your current success?

I think my best decision ever was to start this company with Sandy! Yes, I had like almost like a lot of other mistakes that I’ve done have not been such big mistakes because I started with him; we just gave us time, and we could go through that whole process of changing what we have changed in the business.

Right? Hiring people who are like us, hiring people in our own network going through those highs and lows that you never prepared for when we were doing a job. So I think the single best decision I’ve made is starting with him.

That's right!

And what’s one strong opinion you had about running a startup that has completely changed or reversed since you started?

Aside from the easy thing!

Yeah!

So it's coming back to the same thing, right? So everyone that I used to go to—like a good chunk of my friends were doing startups at the time you were thinking of doing a startup. And most of them used to say, “Okay, hey, if you don't solve your own problem, it is very hard.”

Right?

So on day one, when you're thinking about the model, we thought, “Hey, we will build Fashiona for us. I don’t like to go to a mall, but I still want to try it.”

But I start thinking about my own problem, and at all times, you may not have problems that you want to solve right now; you may not recognize them. It doesn’t mean that you can't solve it whether, but because so many people told me, I thought I can't build a product for someone else; it has to be my own.

But when we went through this whole discovery process, I think that I don't hold that opinion anymore. You can’t build for others. It’s hard, definitely much, much harder than building a product for yourself, but in many cases, especially I think for the next 10 years, most products that we built in India will be built for tier 2, tier 3 audiences, right?

And most of these people will be building starters will come from metros, will come from IITs, and they will not be themselves!

Yep!

But you still have to solve for that, yep!

Yeah! I think it’s also some point if it’s your users, not yourself, is that you care deeply about the users, yes, and it's clear from how you talk that you do care.

Alright! So switching topics a little bit, I want to talk a little bit about the Indian startup ecosystem because it's been growing pretty rapidly recently, and it seems like things are starting to click, which is great.

So maybe first question about that is, how has the ecosystem evolved since you started? Like, what have you seen in what works and what doesn't?

I think one very positive thing has happened in the ecosystem is when we started everyone was like, “Tell me what are you a copy of?” Either in the US or in China, right? And because of that, we struggled a lot in our early days because we could not figure out a parallel for this in either the US and China.

And we would say, “Hey, all big Indian businesses so far in tech have been a copy of one of the other. You can localize it, but they are still inspired by something.”

But what has happened right over the last three years and a lot of that has changed because again of reliance to Jio and with UPI, which is the new payment system in India, people are able to transact online and people are online.

So now you are building products for like tier two, tier three, tier four; they don’t behave in the same way as Western users do, so you can’t get the same Western-inspired product into India and get to make it work for them.

Right?

So now, a lot of new companies are coming up who are taking a very new approach—like for the first time—building out for these users, understanding bottom-up what their problems are, not thinking top-down, “This is how it should be; where does this exist in the U.S.?”

Yep!

Yeah! Right? So I think this is a very big positive development for India!

Yeah!

Aside from what you're working on, are there other big problems in India that you think founders could focus on or should focus on?

Yeah! And most of this would be for the same audience—right? So all of these users, tier 2, tier 3, tier 4 users have come online in the last three years, and we have started to solve commerce for them—that's obviously the most basic need—but then people will start focusing on “Can we solve housing for them, education for them, healthcare for them?”

I think the journey you just started in the next 10 years—people will figure everything out for these guys! Because these people right now use only WhatsApp, Facebook, maybe a couple more apps, maybe Meesho, and that's all!

Yep!

Alright! So how do you solve for where do they spend more time? How can you build and came from them—entertainment for them? Everything else!

So, I’m sure with hundreds of possible ideas that will come for—but it will come from the same audience, and people who are close to them will be able to figure out the right answers!

Make sense! Do you think it's possible? It's great that you know people in your build are building stuff for themselves now—it makes total sense!

Do you think it's possible for foreigners to come into India and start a startup here? Would you suggest it at all?

I think it's definitely possible but it’s difficult! And now, especially for foreigners, like 10 years ago, you could have just done like got over here or maybe has something else here and that would have worked.

But now, if you have to go and understand one system or someone that you don’t culturally, it’s harder! Yeah! Right?

So I’m sure people can do it, and the great thing is especially for a Western audience, unlike China, people mostly build products in English! Right?

And since people speak English outside, they can come and build for the same audience, but understanding how do people use it— a lot of that has to be learned out.

So someone who can do it, maybe we can build it out! So it's harder but not impossible!

Cool!

What is your best piece of advice for aspiring Indian founders?

My best piece of advice for aspiring Indian founders will be just go out and stay very close to users! The only thing that has worked for us—and I think will work for a lot of people when they build out for this audience—is being super user-focused!

Do not listen to anyone except what your user says! Stay close to them always! Do not assume things for them; challenge everything that exists as a default!

Right now, is what the status quo is! Is the UX the same? New build it out in English? Or do build on one acting language? Or you may be the journey—user journey would be very different!

Maybe you have to let go of saying, “Hey, I will not have a call center.” Maybe these guys need to speak to someone to get the problem solved! Like, you have to challenge all notions that are good and bad out there!

Because a lot of these users think in many different ways. We have seen if you speak to a user on the phone, suddenly the trust level goes up!

Yep!

Because they think they're speaking to a person, not a company, and they trust a person more than a company!

And I’m saying you will have to challenge a lot of ways of how startups are ever built and of how products are good—but if you stay very close to users, you're super user-focused, people will figure out answers!

And I think they need to be a lot of problem solved for these audiences!

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense!

Alright! So, I want to finish off with a lightning round, which is like five quick—five quick questions.

So one after Meesho! What is the most exciting startup in India?

It’s hard! I would say ShareChat, right?

Yes—ShareChat! Because they’re one of the few other companies who have built a product for India, right? Building out for the tier 2, tier 3—like a lot of people are coming and spending all their time on ShareChat!

Yeah!

So for the audience, what is ShareChat?

So ShareChat is a vernacular social network in India built for smaller towns and cities, and it's where people come and go through content in their own language—written by people around them!

So, so many—like there are so many languages in India! Do you know how many?

Yeah, there are a lot! There are so many!

Yeah! So it said that like a dialect changes every 2 kilometers in India, so there are 17!

Yep!

Cool! So you went to IIT Delhi, so why is Delhi the best IIT?

I think being in the capital of this helps; and if you see, most of the unicorn founders in India are from IIT Delhi. You look at Flipkart’s founders—Ankita and Iyer!

Right?

It's always been, and I’m proud of it! If you ask me why did I start this company, I was super inspired by what Flipkart founders did, right?

And I said if they can do it, we can do it as well!

Yeah! And that's what inspires a lot of IIT Delhi founders to go out and start companies!

So I’m sure people took notice because people were close to capital; that is definitely there!

Mhm!

So, what’s the best IIT after Delhi?

But I always have to pick a name because a lot of my friends—very close friends—come from IIT Kanpur!

Oh really?

Yeah!

Okay!

What’s a must-read book everyone should read and why?

There’s a book that I read every year again and again. It’s The Hard Thing About Hard Things!

Right!

Because I just feel for a phone or a startup!

It’s hard!

Because you go back, and in a lot of situations you face, it’s just written in that book. And it's written—it’s not saying, “Hey, this is good, and this is bad,” but it's a very util perspective.

This happens, and sometimes you have to take calls! Right?

A lot of things I have done in enabling me to take the right decisions. I saw many times the use of frameworks that exist in that book, so I've read it, I think, four times in the last four years.

I just go back and revise everything!

Yeah, yeah! That’s my favorite! When people ask me what book should I read related to startups, that's that and Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston are the only two books!

And I remember reading it during a rough patch when I went during my startup, and I was like, “Thank you! I’m not the only one!”

Alright! What's a startup idea you'd be working on if Meesho didn't happen?

I don’t know, but as I said, if I do a startup today, yeah, I will do it for—you know, like tier 2, tier 3!

Or 2003, haven’t not built it for the metro audience!

Thanks! My chance!

Alright, last question! In a hundred years from now, what do you hope Meesho is?

I think a hundred years is a long time. Like business—gene deck will change. I don’t know if we will be mobile; it'll be something else, right?

So a hundred years is a very, very long term for technology, but as an organization, I think one thing that should stay until then has to be that we should stay user focused!

And I think if that framework is there, the team continues to believe in that—even a hundred years from now, I think we will stay around.

We will build products which will be very scalable, which will impact lives in ways that most people can't imagine, but I think it will be a company which will still be so focused.

Could be doing something else with new technologies; I don’t know!

That makes sense! That’s a great answer!

Cool! Thank you so much!

Awesome! Thank you so much for having me!

Yes, go!