From From -1 to Meesho | Before the IPO | How Vidit Aatrey & Sanjeev Barnwal Built for Bharat · · South Park Commons India
“We charge consumers like 30 rupees extra for every cash-on-delivery order. A lot of women even if they have bank accounts on paper don't have access to those accounts — their husbands control them, so they prefer to buy with cash.”
On , Vidit Aatrey, CEO & Co-Founder at Meesho, spoke about payments during From -1 to Meesho | Before the IPO | How Vidit Aatrey & Sanjeev Barnwal Built for Bharat on South Park Commons India.
Vidit Aatrey, CEO and co-founder of Meesho, recently participated in a fireside chat at the ET Startup Awards alongside Groww CEO Lalit Keshre, where the two discussed the transition from startup to publicly listed company. Aatrey noted that an IPO is a process lasting roughly nine months rather than a single-day event, and emphasized the importance of transparent communication with investors and avoiding overpromising. He also recounted an anecdote from Meesho's first annual general meeting as a public company, where retail investors, including a retired couple, expressed personal stakes in the company's performance. In an episode of the Legendary Pivots series, Aatrey discussed Meesho's early history and its pivot from a reseller model to a consumer model, a decision made after observing a WhatsApp-based economy that he and co-founder Sanjeev Barnwal had not initially understood. He also described the company's path to profitability, stating that leaders set a goal in June 2022 to become profitable within a year, and that Meesho achieved its first profitable and cash-flow-positive month in July 2023. Aatrey further spoke about leveraging new technologies, such as AI and voice agents, to serve users who are less familiar with reading and typing, as part of the company's mission to bring more consumers online.
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