Meesho, an Indian e-commerce marketplace, had a good first day as a public company, with its shares climbing as much as 46% from its issue price as investors jumped to grab a piece of the company built around small merchants and value-conscious consumers.
The stock opened at ₹162.50, up from the issue price of ₹111, and reached a high of ₹171.84, giving Meesho a market capitalization of ₹780 billion (around $8.69 billion). The company raised $606 million in the IPO.
Ten-year-old Meesho was last valued at about $5 billion following a private funding round in 2021.
Elevation Capital, Peak XV Partners, and Y Combinator were among the early shareholders who have sold their stakes in the IPO. Investors, including SoftBank, Prosus, and Fidelity, haven’t sold any shares yet.
Founded in 2015, Meesho started off as a WhatsApp-based social-commerce platform for first-time online shoppers. It has managed to compete successfully with incumbents like Flipkart and Amazon by leaning into a low-cost marketplace model aimed at connecting small merchants with price-sensitive consumers across smaller towns in the country. In the past 12 months, it reported 234.2 million transacting users, 706,471 annual sellers, and over 50,000 active content creators.
“Ringing the bell generally means trading,” said Meesho co-founder and CEO Vidit Aatrey during the public listing ceremony. “But today, for me at Meesho, for everyone at Meesho, this ringing basically means that our mission is not just our mission. Now it’s everyone’s mission.”
In the six months ended September 30, Meesho generated revenue of ₹55.78 billion (approximately $620.3 million), up from ₹43.11 billion (around $479.6 million) a year earlier, according to its prospectus. Net merchandise value rose 44% to ₹191.94 billion (about $2.14 billion) in the same period. However, the company’s losses widened to ₹4.33 billion (roughly $48.2 million), compared with ₹0.24 billion (around $2.7 million) a year earlier.
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The Bengaluru-based company compares itself to other value-driven marketplaces like Pinduoduo in China, Shopee in Southeast Asia, and Mercado Libre in Latin America. However, its commission-light model has increased pressure on Indian rivals Amazon and Flipkart.
Meesho’s listing follows a slew of startup IPOs in India. In the past few months Pine Labs, Groww, Lenskart, Physics Wallah, and Capillary Technologies have gone public, and the momentum is expected to continue next year, with Flipkart, Oyo, and PhonePe preparing for listings.
