Rahul Mathur Profile picture
Oct 22, 2025 7 tweets 5 min read Read on X
Meesho clocked ₹30,000 crore of Sales in FY25 - this is approx. 30 lakh orders per day fulfilled by 5 lakh sellers!

They aim to raise ~₹6,500 crore in their upcoming IPO; and it is the first horizontal e-commerce platform to go public in India (Flipkart started 8 years prior btw!)

Meesho’s updated 667 page DRHP is a must read for anyone who follows E-Commerce in India

Here are my 5 key takeaways from the filings⤵️
(1) Meesho has 21 crore active shoppers who place avg. 9+ orders per year 🤯

Few observations v/s their 2024 annual report:

(a) LTM order frequency is up from 9 to 9.5

(b) ATUs (active shoppers) is also up from 18.7 crore to 21.3 crore

(c) Order growth (50% YOY) is outstripping NMV growth (36% YOY) - this is interesting, Meesho is already a value commerce platform - the AOV is declining even further (by design) - to grow the customer base!

AOV has reduced from ₹336 (FY 23) to ~₹270 (Q1 FY26) - worth tracking this for the future! Valmo (check pt 3) is critical to making this AOV decline unit economic sustainable.

PS - I had covered Meesho’s 2024 Annual Report a few months back (bookmark for later):

x.com/Rahul_J_Mathur…Image
(2) Scale economies are somewhat questionable….. (my only bear case on this business)

(a) The cost per order is down to ~₹37 in Q1 FY26 from ~₹50 in FY23 👍 Awesome, right?

(b) Well, not really - because AOV has also come down!

(c) As a % of AOV - cost per order is ~13.7% v/s 15% in FY23 - not much has changed…

This actually flows into the Contribution Margin - it remains at ~4.5% in Q1 FY26 v/s the peak ~5.6% in FY24.

Now, I’d also highlight that the bull case here is - AOV decline will plateau and as Meesho moves from 60% Valmo orchestration to ~80%+ orchestration (plus some further tweaks) - this should work just fine (if it doesn’t, don’t ask me).Image
(3) Valmo (Meesho’s logistics arm) delivers 20-30 Lakh orders per day!

Meesho launched its own logistics aggregation business (Valmo) in August 2022; Valmo processed 30 crore orders in Q1 FY26 with a team of ~200 employees 🤯

The statistics are eye popping:

(a) Meesho is the highest contributor to e-commerce orders in India (~31% of total)

(b) Meesho has 13.5K partner logistics firms (SMEs mostly) who in-turn work with ~85.5K deliver agents

(c) Valmo’s orchestration network today handles ~62% of Meesho orders v/s 0 approx. 3 years ago!!

For context: In FY25, Valmo handled 75 crore orders i.e. 20 Lakh orders per day! Which is now at a 30 Lakh per day runrate.

RIP E-Commerce Express 🙏 Logistics is an unforgiving business esp. when your anchor customer decides to insource v/s outsource.

PS: I wrote about Valmo when it was launched last year (bookmark & read for later):

x.com/Rahul_J_Mathur…Image
(4) Creator led discovery generates ₹1,000 crore in Sales!

As of 30th June, Meesho has ~40K active creators who record short form videos & host live streams to guide Meesho shoppers who contributed ~₹1,000 crore in net Sales for the past 12 months!

(a) Meesho launched the Meesho Creator Club in March ‘23

(b) The creator base is growing fast; it was ~28K as of March ‘25

(c) The 40K active creators produced ~6.8 Lakh pieces of order generating content in the past 12 months!

Note: Creators are directly attributed with ~3% of net Sales of Meesho; this is a far cry from their previous pure re-seller driven model.

Nonetheless, Meesho is a great example of why Brands continue to deploy capital into the Creator Economy - influence & familiarity drives transactions!Image
(5) COD (Cash On Delivery) is ~75% of orders (even today!)

This statistic might surprise you - but you & I are in the minority of e-commerce shoppers who pre-pay using credit cards 😁

(a) COD as % of total orders is down from ~88% (2023) to ~75% (Q1 FY26); there is a slow but subtle shift from COD to pre-paid orders

(b) However, there is NO improvement in the success rate of COD orders (despite taking control over logistics with Valmo)

Key Q: how does Meesho compare v/s the industry average?

- Meesho (75% COD) is higher than industry average (60%)
- Meesho RTO rate of 25% on COD orders is quite the industry average 😄

Btw, earlier this year, I had done a 20 minute Breakdown video on how Meesho’s creator led value commerce playbook works:

youtu.be/iraHLFVcTRc?si…Image
Congratulations to Vidit, Sanjeev, early investors (YC, Good Capital, Venture Highway, PeakXV, Elevation) and the employees 👏

Big win (again) for YC and PeakXV - another IPO filing after Groww

This business has been through 4 distinct avatars & multiple near death moments - Fashnear (hyperlocal fashion), reseller-led group buying, social commerce and now Value E-Commerce.

Meesho’s current Value E-Commerce playbook in a nutshell is: Match long tail unbranded supply to non-metro city demand through video first discovery (via creators) - delivered to the doorstep via a closed loop logistics network.

➡️ Download UDRHP here: investor.meesho.com/ipo-disclosure…

Discl: Views are my own. DYOR prior to subscribing to any IPO - this post is not an endorsement or paid promotion. Shared for informational purposes only.

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More from @Rahul_J_Mathur

Mar 5
India allocated ₹76,000 crore to Semiconductors in 2021 - the most successful part of that program was a small ₹1,000 crore corpus for Design Linked incentives (DLI)

In Semis - Chip Fabrication & Chip design are two entirely separate activities - Fabrication is high CAPEX - therefore attracts media attention e.g. Tata’s upcoming logic fab in Dholera

But, IP lies in chip design which is high margin, low CAPEX and R&D intensive

DLI 1.0 has struck the goldmine:

(a) 140 core IP units created

(b) 16 chip designs taped out (at 1/5th cost v/s global peers)

(c) 24 startups supported

(d) 14 of whom raised follow-on funding from VCs

(e) While still have ₹250 crore (25% of corpus) left

Here’s what you need to know about this policy success ⤵️
1️⃣What is the DLI scheme?

DLI was a part of the India Semiconductor Mission (ISM) 1.0 to provide the following support to fabless chip design startups in India:

- Structured milestone-based reimbursement of labor & other costs during the R&D phase (cap of ₹15 crore per chip project)
- Reimbursement of Sales & Marketing expense post tape-out (cap of ₹30 crore per chip project)
- Access to EDA tools & IPs at a subsidized rate

The mental model to use is:

- DLI provides financial support for IP creation and chip design
- ISM 1.0 provided Govt support for installation of chip fabrication (Fab) & testing (OSAT) capacity
- PLI (Production Linked Incentives) rewards factory output - which has been launched under Budget 2026 expecting the fabs from ISM 1.0 to go live soon

While ISM 1.0 focuses on large CAPEX projects - DLI 1.0 provided risk capital to help with product development in domestic chip design

Since launch in December 2021, DLI 1.0 has disbursed ₹770 crore (out of a ₹1,000 crore corpus) across 24 different chip projects - with incredible results so far:Image
2️⃣Which companies have been supported under DLI 1.0?

There are 24 distinct fabless chip design startups which received funding under DLI - I’ve picked 8 to highlight below in the table.

The core idea is to use Govt product development “grants” to nudge entrepreneurs to focus on domestic chip requirements to reduce our long term dependency on overseas design & fab companies.

Therefore, you will notice 3 distinct themes:

(1) Most use-cases are Sovereign in nature e.g. video surveillance, drone detection, satellite communications etc

(2) Several use-cases are Strategic in nature (from an import substitution perspective) e.g. edge compute, energy meters

(3) A small set of investors have written high conviction & early cheques into these pre-revenue (and often pre-product! With just LOIs from customers) companies to support their prototyping phase

Which brings us to:Image
Read 6 tweets
Feb 24
Häfele, Hindware, LivSpace & several brands have one common contract manufacturer: Noida based Isler

Isler’s founder Pravesh was an MD at Accenture - he left to start Isler in 2022 inspired by the seeing the wave of PLI supported manufacturing startups in India.

Pravesh partnered with his former Accenture colleague Chirag who had Appliances R&D experience from his tenure at LG in India and Korea - they had a simple hypothesis: “Why hasn’t anyone built a world-class kitchen appliance company in India?”

They opened their first major factory in Noida last year from where they manufacture chimneys, built-in hobs, cooktops, ovens, microwaves, dishwashers, air fryers & much more.

Sharing a few notes from the factory visit last week ⤵️Image
Isler is an ODM (Orignal Design Manufacturer) i.e. it works closely with each of its brand partners to ideate, design, spec & assemble products - it is MUCH more than simple component assembly which typically happens in the EMS space.

When you walk into the Isler factory - you first encounter their Experience Center which has existing product samples & (ready to build) concepts - their clients routinely drop by to test concepts.

In ~2 years of operations, their R&D team has created 100+ SKUs for clients - several of which are now in the production line!

New product development is headed by Varun Ramachandran who had hands on Design & Development experience for Kitchen Appliances at Philips India - the Noida factory has a large R&D lab which we got to tour (can’t share photos from there sadly!)Image
Image
Isler’s factory has a fully configurable production line - Digital Work Instructions on Screens at each workstation in the production process improve the throughput, reduce the error rate and deliver high quality output to customers.

The quality metrics are mindboggling:

Customer rejection / return rate: 0.04%
Field failure rate: 0.08% (well below the 2% industry threshold)

Like most modern factories - everything was marked & labelled with clear POCs across each part of the factory shopfloor - inbound QC, storage, line, testing, outbound QC, packaging & loading.

I couldn’t take pictures inside the factory - but here’s a walkthrough of the final output:
Read 5 tweets
Jan 12
In August 2023, Shubh left Stable Money to start his own startup - he got off to a flying start by getting an early cheque from EF India, finding his co-founder Saksham and lining up their first few customers.

Exactly a year later - tragedy struck: Shubh was diagnosed with Gullain Bairre Syndrome - a rare neuroglial condition which impacts 1 in 1 Lakh individuals.

In a matter of days, Shubh condition deteriorated significantly - he went from the gym rat I first met to someone who couldn’t even move his limbs!
Shubh was in the ICU for a month - he was fully paralyzed. Saksham took the tough call of shutting down Iterate AI while his co-founder battled for his life in hospital.

Once Shubh got out of the ICU - he had to re-start his life: He learnt how to stand, walk & run again. If you meet him today, you would find it very hard to believe that he was paralyzed less than a year ago!Image
He’s now lifting 50% of his previous best as an athlete, and the recovery is miraculous 🙏

“Forged by Fire” is the best way to describe what Shubh, his family & his co-founder Saksham went through in 2025.

Saksham started another company and just got admitted to the YC W26 cohort.

Shubh is also back to building with his best friends from KGP - Utsav and Pradeep.
Read 4 tweets
Dec 27, 2025
Sharing my Top 25 podcasts for 2025:

This year, I listened to 16800 minutes of podcasts across 350 downloaded episodes while running, lifting & commuting across 3 continents.

The methodology remains unchanged for the past 3 years - my subjective assessment of the quality of discussion, rarity of guest appearance & relevance of insights shared (all from my own notes taken on Google Keep)

The Top 25 are as follows ⤵️Image
Founder Interviews:

(1) Dr. Fei-Fei Li (CEO, World Labs) — Lenny’s Podcast

(2) Qasar Younis (CEO, Applied Intuition) — In Depth

(3) Eoghan McCabe (CEO, Intercom) — Lenny’s Podcast

(4) Varun Anand (Co-founder, Clay) — In Depth

(5) Parag Agrawal (former CEO, Twitter) — Lenny’s Podcast

(6) Vlad Tenev (CEO, Robinhood) — 20VC

In the top founder interviews, Lenny ties with First Round Capital’s In Depth podcast.

Apart from Vald Tenev, the other 5 guests tend to be media shy - in fact Qasar Younis put his first tweet out this year after 18 years of having a Twitter account 😆

Each of these founders has had a cracker year: Clay raised at a $3bn valuation, Intercom was re-born after their AI agent Finn took off, Parag’s redemption after Twitter has come from his new company Parallel ($100M+ raised) etcImage
Investor Interviews:

(7) Neil Mehta (Greenoaks) — Invest Like the Best

(8) Hemant Taneja (CEO, General Catalyst) — 20VC

(9) Shervin Pishevar — 20VC

(10) Steven Mandel (Founder, Lone Pine) — Joys of Compounding

(11) Martín Escobari (General Atlantic) — Invest Like the Best

(12) Jeff Horing (Co-founder, Insight Partners) — Invest Like the Best

(13) Jay Hoag (Co-founder, TCV) — Invest Like the Best

(14) Joshua Kushner (Founder, Thrive Capital) — Invest Like the Best

In the top investor interviews, “Invest Like The Best” is a clear outlier - this year, the host Patrick has been able to pull real heavyweights into exclusive podcast interviews.

Each of these investors is a GOAT in their own right e.g. Shervin has an impressive 70x MOIC across all his vintage investments to date (!) Hemant has deployed $1bn+ into Stripe alone. Jeff from Insight has 6 members of his global IC who have 25+ year tenure at the firm (!!)

These interviews cover everything from Neil Mehta’s JDCE (Jaw Dropping Customer Experience) framework to Steven Mandel’s Transparency framework.Image
Read 6 tweets
Dec 15, 2025
Last year, Bajaj Finance presented its FinAI strategy with the goal to save ₹150 crore in OPEX in FY 26

They shared 21 workstreams where AI would be deployed and this month - BFL has come back with an impressive update on the FinAI strategy

Below are highlights from the investor day ⤵️Image
1️⃣Certain updates from BFL regarding megatrends caught my attention:

Megatrends are structural shifts in India’s commerce & finance landscape which the BFL leadership team updates from time to time - these are supposed to guide the overall Strategy for the firm.

(a) BFL has a 147 member team working on AI across 7 pods (these pods together work towards the earlier 21 pillars identified under the FinAI strategy 2024)

(b) ₹4,500 crore of loans have been disbursed using voice AI (v/s last reported statistic from their vendor Navana AI was ~ ₹1,500 crore in Aug 2025) - clear acceleration

(c) Finance on ONDC is picking up!
BFL is disbursing ~₹30 crore in loans per month now via its integration with ONDC (which took place as recently as June 2025)

(d) Live & social commerce playbook:
BFL has onboarded 2,000+ creators to help drive Sales across Bajaj Mall (electronics marketplace) and other online properties

(e) BFL has decided to NOT pursue insurance entirely (good decision if you ask me 😆)Image
2️⃣Next, let us take a look at some Tech updates:

BFL is looking to add 100+ members to its AI team in the next 6 months (growing headcount from 150 to 250)

(a) 100% of videos were generated using AI - this would be ~10K+ videos

(b) 42% of banners were generated using AI - this would be ~ 2 Lakh+ banners

(c) BFL has ~5.5 peta bytes of data so far

BFL is investing future backwards: They have converted 9 crore voice call logs into text format - similar to what PB FinTech has done - precisely to be able to do SFT on LLMs for specific BFSI tasks!Image
Read 7 tweets
Dec 4, 2025
10 years ago, Y Combinator took the leap of faith to admit Meesho into the S16 program

In that same year, 2 individuals decided to invest in Meesho alongside YC; they’re both sitting on a x210 return in less than 10 years.

Both investors are named in the RHP; they are well regarded investors but not well known to the general public.

Here’s who they are ⤵️
(1) Man Hay Tam ($10.2 million position)

He is selling 33 Lakh shares of Meesho in the OFS portion of the IPO - in fact, he is even named in the Top 10 selling shareholders as part of the IPO.

Man had bought a total of 82 Lakh shares (equivalent) in 2016 at a ~₹43 Lakh cost price.

Some context: In 2016, this would have meant Man wrote a large ~$60K cheque to Meesho as part of the S16 Demo Day round (typical Angels in YC co’s would write < $25K cheques)

Man’s $60K cheque in 2015 is today a $10.2 million position 🤯

🤔So, who is he?
Man Hay Tam is known to the world as Perry Tam - one of the GPs at Locus Ventures - a fund started in 2016!

(a) Perry studied CS at Cornell Univ - then worked at Oracle, Guidewire & FB

(b) He founded a gaming studio called Storm8 which he sold in 2021

(c) More recently, he started a DeFi trading firm called Jaguar Technologies

Btw, Perry & his 3 fellow GPs have an astounding track record of Angel investments including Gitlab, Postmates, Blue Bottle Coffee etc.

Locus Ventures has invested in several India focused companies too e.g. Decentro, Razorpay and Recko (acquired by Stripe).

Man is walking home with a $4.1 million cash payday on this investment AND a further ~$6 million worth of shares which free up at lock-up: VERY well deserved 👏Image
Before we go to the 2nd individual investor, I would like to provide an honorable mention to Rohan Malhotra (RIP)

If you study the Meesho RHP closely, you would notice Rohan Malhotra, Good Capital and other members of the Malhotra mentioned.

Rohan passed away on 1st October 2024 - with his brother (Arjun) - they had invested in Meesho when it was called Fashnear BEFORE the YC S16 admission

Rohan & Arjun were running Investopad - a product studio at the time - and invested personal capital into Fashnear (now called Meesho)

In terms of pure returns, Meesho has been a home run:

(a) “Meesho Black Cod” - an SPV of Good Capital - holds 1.21 crore shares - equivalent to ₹134.5 crore or a $15M position

(b) Rohan’s family owns ~ 92 lakh shares - equivalent to ₹102.2 crore or $11.5M

Neither entities are selling - deep conviction in one of their earliest investments!

Goes without saying - money without the man is the most unfortunate of situations - RIP Rohan; I had one conversation with you in 2020 - appreciate your thoughtfulness & kind words (always) 🙏Image
Read 5 tweets

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