Google in talks to spend money on Fb-backed Indian social commerce Meesho – TechCrunch

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Google has held discussions to take a position over $50 million in Indian social commerce startup Meesho, which lately secured $570 million in a financing spherical, in response to a supply acquainted with the matter.
The Android-maker, which has backed over half a dozen startups in India, has but to make the funding in Meesho, in response to one other particular person acquainted with the matter.
Meesho — which counts Fb, B Capital, SoftBank, Sequoia Capital India, Y Combinator and Elevation Capital amongst its earliest traders — operates a three-sided market that connects suppliers (producers and distributors) and resellers with clients on social media platforms similar to WhatsApp, Fb and Instagram. The resellers purchase listed merchandise from the suppliers and make fee on every transaction once they promote to clients.
About 80% of resellers on the platform are girls. From the start, the startup has aimed to assist girls begin their enterprise with out want for any capital. The startup, which like many different e-commerce companies was severely hit by the pandemic final yr, has totally recovered and achieved an all-time peak progress in current months.
Meesho’s current fast-growth has been a subject of a number of critical discussions at Flipkart, India’s largest e-commerce agency, in response to two individuals who work on the agency’s lately launched social commerce effort.
As of April this yr, 13 million entrepreneurs and greater than 100,000 suppliers had been utilizing Meesho, the startup’s founder Vidit Aatrey advised TechCrunch in an interview final month, including that the startup had since “grown 3x.”
At stake is the world’s second-largest web market, the place e-commerce has hardly made any dent to the general retail. Simply the social commerce market is predicted to be price as much as $20 billion in worth by 2025, up from about $1 billion to $1.5 billion final yr, analysts at Bernstein stated final month.
“Social commerce has the flexibility to empower greater than 40 million small entrepreneurs throughout India. Right this moment, 85% of sellers utilizing social commerce are small, offline-oriented retailers who use social channels to open up new progress alternatives,” they wrote.
Google, which has dedicated to take a position $10 billion in 1India within the subsequent couple of years, has additionally backed Indian startups Look and DailyHunt. YouTube acquired social commerce startup SimSim in July this yr. Earlier this month, the agency backed Bangalore-based neobanking startup Open.

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