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):
(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).
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):
(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!
(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:
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.
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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India will see its 1st pureplay data center IPO soon - Sify Infinit Spaces (SISL) has filed for a ₹3700 crore IPO last week
SISL was started in 2017 as a subsidiary of NASDAQ listed Sify Technologies - it operates 14 colocation data center sites in India.
For FY25 - it made ~₹1,400 crore revenue with ₹125 crore PAT; the EBITDA margin is 44%
Btw, SISL’s parent Sify Tech was affiliated to the infamous Satyam Computers at the time of founding until 2005 (full stake sale) - at the time of 2009 scam - it was no longer affiliated.
I’ve been studying the Data Center opportunity in India for a couple of weeks - sharing a few fun facts to begin your learning journey below ⤵️
(1) India consumes 20% of global data - but has only 3% of data center (DC) capacity
Our data consumption will only continue to grow:
(a) We are the 2nd largest consumption market for several AI co’s like OpenAI, Perplexity etc
(b) 5G roll-out & adoption is still WIP; has gone from 10% to 35% penetration last year - will go beyond 50% in the next 18 months
(c) Our per capita data consumption is ~25GB per month, expected to grow to ~40GB per month over the next 5 yrs
(2) Regulatory tailwinds in this sector are VERY strong
- The central Govt has the Data Center Policy 2020 which gives a single window clearance
- Each state (as shown below) has further subsidies & incentives to attract hyperscalers
- The dual catalyst is Data Localization norms & DPDP (2023)
This year, ICONIQ led Anthropic’s $5bn Series F, ElevenLabs $180M Series C, Legora’s $80M Series B and TinyFish’s $47M Series A..
They are a media shy Wealth Mgt firm with $90bn+ of AUM who put their money where their pen is (quite literally)
Earlier this yr, they published their “State of AI 2025” report - now they’ve topped it up with several updates in a 73 page analysis of their portfolio companies.
Sharing a few takeaways ⤵️
(1) “AI” has changed what “best in class” means for Software
(a) OPEX leverage: ARR per FTE has increased 65% from ~$200K Pre-AI (2020) to $331K now; touching $390K for co’s with $500M+ ARR
(b) The goalpost “Rule of 40%” is now the “Rule of 60%” - BUT, there is ONE nuance: FCF margins are taking a hit - but growth rates are MUCH higher (even for “AI adjacent” SaaS co’s)
(c) NDRs (net dollar retention) also takes a hit - gold standard was ~135% in 2020; it is now down to ~115%. Elevated churn (experimental ARR, hype etc), competition & pricing pressure is hurting.
The change doesn’t impact Seed investors (like me) - but is VERY relevant for Growth & Public market investors.
Btw, ICONIQ’s Enterprise Five - ARR, NDR, Rule of 60%, Net Magic Number & ARR per FTE provides an excellent scorecard for Growth investors!
(2) The mere presence of “AI” revives growth (not joking)
(a) The one pint comment is that every VC has an “AI heavy” portfolio because all SaaS co’s have pivoted into AI co’s
(b) There is some data to support why this might help - it reinvigorates innovation (EPD teams), outbound (Sales morale) & inbound demand (FOMO)
(c) I’ve seen at least one of our portfolio co’s come back from extinction to growth mode because of AI - even SMBs can now be targeted profitably (CS cost is down, Sales can be automated & outcomes can be sold)
Example from ICONIQ: Palantir went from 15% YoY growth in Q2 ‘23 to ~35% growth in Q4 ‘24 - driven by “AI”
Doug Leone has been a Partner at Sequoia for 32 years now - he doesn’t do a lot of interviews - but his track record is incredible - ServiceNow ($187bn), Nubank ($73bn), Medallia (acq. $6.4bn) and he continues to serve as a board member to many companies.
Doug did a rare interview on the Training Data podcast where he answered some key Qs about investing in AI today; sharing a few notes from the same:
(1) Where will value accrue in the AI stack? Applications!
“Values always accrues up at the application layer - near the customer, money & the business user.”
(2) Can you sit out of AI as an investor? Nope
”You are at the front end of a cycle, which doesn’t mean you have to invest in everything but you have to invest.”
(3) What to do about round prices in AI today?
“You see a small company with very good momentum in a front end of the market; you lean in and you hold your nose on price.”
(Arguably, Sequoia did this with Google back in the day; a $100M post money valuation for a Series A)
(4) Did Sequoia foresee the AI wave? Nope!
“In March 2022, I had a slide that talked about all the waves - the next box was a question mark. We (Sequoia partnership) did not see the wave coming; this wave has been a tsunami and I don’t think there’s there’s any end in sight.”
PS: That March ‘22 investor interaction was Doug’s last one as an active partner at the firm (he has since stopped doing new investments & has more of an advisory role)
(5) Is AI any different from the previous waves? Maybe
"The AI wave is bigger than the Industrial Revolution. I had never imagined that there would be something bigger than connectivity (Internet) and the mobility (Mobile) era."
(6) Does company building change in a world of AI? Nothing has changed.
“The business fundamentals are very similar - you need a terrific founder, world class engineers, salespeople that are not administrator etc”
GFF is an annual circus show for Financial Services professionals, founders & entertainers. Hence, I chose to wear my customary Papa Pump outfit (IYKYK, comment below).
I spent most of my two days in meetings (managed to get 17 done!) and a bit of time at the exhibition booths; sharing a few notes from these meetings:
(1) AI first collections agencies are emerging 🗣️
- Lazy VCs wrote this space off when Credgenics raised a $50M Series B from WestBridge in August 2023
- Collections is evergreen - stress emerges in each pocket at different times (e.g. unsecured PL, MFI etc)
- Due to competition now, Collections has moved from Software + Service to Outcome i.e. pricing based on ROR uplift delivered; this is a great pricing model for AI services
- The prev. gen of Collections companies were either offline agencies or human call centers or a hybrid of both
- The modern Collections agencies are building AI enabled Credit Engines i.e. a full funnel process to manage cases from pre-due to NPA; Voice AI to call || agents to email, WhatsApp etc || route optimization to direct field force etc
(2) Lots of activity in MFD roll-up & tech enablement 🏦
- Everyone’s uncle wants to build the new age Prudent (NSE:PRUDENT)
- The thesis is “priced in” - the next gen of MFDs are digitally savvy and/or are based in non-metro cities; they need training & then tenure to build their book of biz.
- Several VCs have started to take positions (e.g. $6M Series A in AssetPlus by Eight Roads, $3.5M Seed in ZFunds by Elevation)
- There are several companies still stepping out of woodwork; primarily ex AMC execs or seasoned BFSI professionals who have spent 3+ yrs building their book while bootstrapping & are now starting to raise $$
At a private event, the CEO of a leading Indian bank highlighted that over the next 3 yrs, they will spend ~10% of their IT budget on AI.
For context: The IT budget (headcount, Tech, outsourcing etc) at this size of bank would be ~₹2,500 to ₹3,000 crore per year
Single bank spend on AI is therefore ~₹250 crore per year (there are approx. 25 odd banks of this size or larger).
Now, there are 2 ways to interpret this ~₹6,000 crore ($750M) per year AI spending ⤵️
This depends on whether you are an optimistic or critic:
(1) Optimistic view: In 3 yrs, the actual spend would be X2 or X3 higher i.e. > ₹15,000 crore because some of the AI deployments will eat into the labor budget (check the example in this Thread below)
Indian banks are lighthouse customers (for SEA banks & rest of Indian Enterprise); therefore it would catalyze X5 further spending on AI - HUGE (~₹50,000 crore p.a.) opportunity within India itself - great for startups!
(2) Critical view: ~₹6,000 crore in AI spending is not sufficient to catalyze a new set of FinTech Infra vendors (centered around AI); maybe all of the incremental spend will go to incumbent service & Tech vendors
But, for the critics, I have 2 interesting examples from BFSI:
Navana AI x Bajaj Finance
Mr Sanjiv Bajaj (MD @ Bajaj Finserv) highlighted ~6 months ago that ~₹150 crore of loan disbursal per month is powered by Navana AI (indic voice AI)
The most recent public figure is that Navana AI is doing ~₹1,000 crore of loan disbursal per month for Bajaj Finance - rapid scaleup!
For those who track Bajaj Finance closely, you would know about their “FinAI” company ambition & the goal of saving ₹150 crore in OPEX for FY26 using GenAI; I had covered this in a 20 minute Breakdown video earlier this year:
From 0 to $15M ARR in 90 days of launch - Emergent Labs is India’s fastest growing AI startup🤯
Emergent was founded a year ago by Dunzo’s former CTO Mukund Jha - they now have 57 team members (75% of headcount) in India
The velocity of product shipping & pace of ARR addition is insane; last month they were at $10M ARR - they’ve grown 50% MoM!
Sharing a few mind blowing facts about this company⤵️
The metrics are off the charts 📈
(a) 1.5 million+ unique apps created
(b) 1 million+ sign-ups to date
(c) 25,000+ paying customers
(d) 180+ countries represented in user base
Above was reported this month by the company during interviews with TBPN & with their early investor Together Fund (anchored by Freshwork's founder Girish)
Emergent is a great example of “Globally competitive product, built with love from India”
How did they execute this?
Firstly, this is a “hardcore” team (by all standards) - they subscribe to the 996 culture which is in Mukund’s DNA from having run an operationally intensive offline business (Dunzo)
They key to their early success is Engineered (not, accidental) Virality:
(1) Invested in Product upfront: They had 8 team members (incl. 2 founders) who spent 6 months building; ensuring the “time to value” from the onboarding flow to end output was brought from 1 hr to < 20 mins
(2) Built technical differentiation: Neo, their AI coding agent, ranked no.1 on SWE-Bench on two occasions (Oct ‘24 and Dec ‘24)
(3) Created hype before launch: Because of the technical progress & word of mouth, they had a 20,000+ member invite waitlist ready before launch day
(4) Thoughtful GTM on launch day: Planned weeks in advance & allocated a $100K marketing budget for TikTok, Reels & Twitter - used the influencer channel to their advantage
(5) AI-led continuous content push: For a brief period post launch, they released ~500+ AI generated videos of the product, customer outcomes & UGC success moments
(6) Product/PLG: Per the team, ~5% of their inbound traffic is attributable to the “Made with Emergent” badge (this is the old Hotmail trick); you can see this even in the tools I have built with Emergent
Overall, this is what you’d expect from a 2nd time founder - thoughtful & planned GTM followed by relentless execution (which has paid off); this brings me to: