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Meet Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal who built Meesho into a billion-dollar revenue company. 1. Coming from a lower-middle-class family in Meerut (UP), Vidit Aatrey made everyone proud when he got a seat at the prestigious IIT Delhi for electrical engineering. He started working at ITC and later shifted to Inmobi in the strategy team in 2015. Then, he met someone who changed his life. 👇 2. His friend Sanjeev Barnwal inquired about a position at Inmobi, but Vidit proposed an alternative - building a startup together. Vidit left his job to take the plunge. 🙌 3. They decided to build a platform for small businesses to sell on social platforms and started holding placards to persuade customers to buy fashion products from their app and not the local shop. In 2015, FASHNEAR started. ✅ 4. Targeting one shop daily, they adopted the try-and-buy model where they used to go to a shop, pick up a product and then deliver it to the customer. After four months, they realized they had a problem. 👇 5. Customers wanted a wide range of options and having products just from a local market was not the correct solution. They changed the business model and rebranded to a new name. In 2016, Meesho was born. 🚀 6. Meesho (short for Meri Shop) started as an online platform for WhatsApp sellers to sell across India. It bridged the gap between suppliers who could list products on Meesho and resellers who could buy them for their customers. Meesho onboarded 10,000 shops in the first six months, and magic happened. 🪄 7. By July 2016, Meesho became one of the three Indian startups for the prestigious Ycombinator programme. Since more than 50% of users were stay-at-home moms, Meesho enabled them to open their businesses without holding inventory. And more funding followed. 💵 8. In October 2017, Meesho raised 19.4 CR led by SAIF partners. It grew to a business of 68.54 lakhs with Rs 0 spent on marketing. It allowed homemakers to earn a 10%-20% commission on each transaction. As Meesho touched 1 million sellers in 2018, it raised 360 CR more in funding. 💰 9. As Meesho touched 209,000 monthly users and 1.2 million monthly orders, it even raised 893.8 CR from the giant - Facebook and Naspers. With their support and reach, Meesho grew 84 times to touch 84 CR in revenue by March 2020. 📉 10. Realizing the need for unbranded products, Meesho shifted to an e-commerce model selling products across categories including fashion, lifestyle, beauty, personal care and grocery. 11. It scaled to 55.39 million users and clocked 19.6 million orders monthly. The big news was eventually due. Meesho raised ~2220 CR led by Softbank and entered the unicorn club.🦄 12. Today, Meesho has clicked a revenue of 3500 CR in last six month along with over 18 lakh sellers and 150 million+ users with ~40 lakh orders daily. 💪 ➡️ But the best part - Sanjeev and Vidit made 130,000 sellers lakhpatis in 2023. They have made a lot of dreams come true. 🙏