How Meesho started

Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal founded Meesho in 2015, initially under a different name, with an idea that looked away from the typical e-commerce playbook and toward the millions of people already reselling products informally within their own communities.

The problem they saw

Long before Meesho existed, many people in India — a large number of them women managing a household — were already earning a little extra income by selling clothes, accessories, and household items to friends, family, and neighbours, often by sharing photos over WhatsApp. This informal reselling economy had no real infrastructure behind it: no easy way to source products, no simple way to share a catalogue, and no organised way to manage orders and payments. Aatrey and Barnwal saw a business not in selling to end customers directly, but in supporting the people who were already selling to them.

What they sold first

Meesho's early model gave resellers access to a catalogue of products they could share directly with their own networks on social and messaging apps, without needing to hold any inventory themselves. A reseller could pick items, add their own margin, and forward a shareable version of the listing to potential buyers, with Meesho handling sourcing and logistics behind the scenes. Clothing and fashion accessories were prominent in the early catalogue, matching what was already popular in informal social selling.

The decisions that mattered

Meesho built its business around a channel that already had massive reach — personal messaging apps — instead of trying to build reach from scratch through advertising alone. This meant the earliest growth engine was existing social trust between resellers and their own contacts, something no marketing budget can manufacture directly.

The company chose to serve resellers as a distinct customer group with their own needs, rather than treating them as an afterthought to a general marketplace. Tools and pricing were shaped around what would help someone running a small side business from their phone, not around a storefront model built for individual shoppers.

Meesho also focused on affordability and access, aiming at price-sensitive buyers in smaller towns who were often underserved by other online platforms at the time, rather than competing head-on in metro markets already crowded with e-commerce players.

What a small brand can take from this

Sometimes the customer worth building for is not the end buyer but the person who helps you reach them. Meesho grew by empowering resellers rather than trying to replace them.

Look at where trust and reach already exist in people's lives. A social network built on family and friendship ties can move products faster than a cold advertisement, if you give people an easy way to use it.

Serving an overlooked audience — smaller towns, informal sellers, price-conscious shoppers — can be a stronger starting point than competing in the most contested part of a market.

If you are ready to build a proper storefront around the customers who already trust you, you can start with early access.

Varchas Stores is not affiliated with Meesho. This is an editorial story based on public reporting, written for founders who are starting out.