A Talk by Vidit Aatrey - Founder of Meesho (E-Commerce)

Written By Pratul Venkatesh

This article is compiled from notes I took during a talk by Vidit Aatrey, Founder & CEO of Meesho, India’s largest e-commerce platform. The talk was hosted by South Park Commons (start-up incubator) in Bangalore on June 12 2025. Drawing from his decade-long journey building one of India’s leading e-commerce platforms, Vidit shared candid insights on startup resilience, customer obsession, product pivots, and the cultural nuances of building for India.

Vidit Aatrey, Founder & CEO of Meesho, shared that building a resilient, mission-driven company requires deep customer empathy, adaptability, and a strong founding culture. Early failures and capital constraints shaped Meesho’s DNA, where every new employee worked directly with merchants to foster ownership and insight. Product-market fit emerged through continuous ground-level learning, leading to a pivot from WhatsApp-based selling to a scalable app model post-Jio and pandemic. Teams were structured into autonomous pods, accountable for long-term cashflow impact, reinforcing a culture of accountability and innovation. Aatrey emphasized staying close to users, earning trust over time, and constantly reinventing to stay relevant in a fast-evolving, affordability-driven Indian market.

1. Early-Stage Challenges & Founding Culture

  • Started in 2015, with a mission to democratize e-commerce in India.

  • Faced capital constraints and slow growth in the first two years, which helped shape a resilient team culture.

  • Founders hustled, even running side businesses to keep Meesho afloat.

  • First 5–10 hires were critical: ex-entrepreneurs with high ownership and aligned values, willing to work for low pay because they believed in the vision.

  • Strong emphasis on learning from failures—including multiple product shutdowns and pivots.

2. Deep Customer Empathy

  • All new employees were sent to live and work with real merchants, as interns, to solve any problem the merchant had.

  • Built empathy and real-world understanding; prevented disconnect from sitting in an office.

  • Encouraged open-ended on-ground questioning, and a ritual of sharing insights through documents.

🧠 Why every new Meesho employee worked with a real merchant
Instead of onboarding new employees with slide decks and office tours, Meesho sent them into the field—literally. Every new team member was placed with a merchant somewhere in India as an intern, asked to observe and help solve any real-world problem they could. This practice created strong user empathy, grounded decision-making in reality, and avoided the common startup trap of building for hypothetical users. For a company focused on India’s small sellers—many of whom were new to digital platforms—this was key to product relevance and long-term trust.

3. Iterative Product Development

  • Early idea: a local discovery app for shops—failed due to not understanding customer behavior.

  • Pivoted after observing that women were running WhatsApp-based businesses.

  • Evolved into a platform that empowered women resellers using existing behavior patterns.

In Meesho’s early days, Vidit and his co-founder were driven by the belief that e-commerce could transform small businesses across India. Their first attempt was a local discovery app—an online directory to help customers find nearby shops. The idea was simple: bring visibility to offline businesses through a hyperlocal digital layer. But after six months, it failed. Why? They had spoken to business owners, but not to the customers—missing the full picture of user behavior and demand.

So, they changed their approach. Instead of pitching or surveying, they went and sat inside small shops—literally just observing how business was done. It was during these visits that they noticed something interesting: many small retailers, especially women, were already running informal e-commerce operations via WhatsApp. They’d take photos of products, post them in groups, manage orders manually, and follow up on payments—all without a formal platform. That organic behavior sparked the next idea.

Rather than introduce a completely new system, Meesho chose to build on top of what was already working. They evolved into a platform that empowered these women resellers, streamlining the informal WhatsApp model into a more structured, scalable platform—bridging offline relationships with online efficiency. That was the beginning of Meesho as we know it today.

4. Product-Market Fit & Evolution

  • Product-market fit came after multiple failed versions and continuous feedback loops.

  • Pivoted from WhatsApp-based model to app-based after Jio and pandemic increased digital adoption.

  • App shift improved consumer experience, analytics, and growth.

📶 What was the "Post-Jio" shift and why did it matter?
In 2016, Reliance Jio launched its mobile network in India, offering free and later extremely affordable 4G internet access to hundreds of millions. This move drastically reduced data costs and catalyzed one of the fastest digital adoptions in the world. Before Jio, many Indians accessed the internet sporadically due to high data prices, often using apps like WhatsApp which let users choose whether to download images. After Jio, the average consumer began using rich media apps more confidently, opening the door to mobile-first startups and digital marketplaces like Meesho. This digitization wave brought millions of new users online—many of whom were first-time internet users—especially in tier 2 and 3 cities.

5. Organizational Design & Ownership

  • Teams organized into small pods (≤10 people) with cross-functional roles—each pod owns a problem and its outcome.

  • Evaluated based on 5-year cashflow impact, fostering accountability.

6. Sustaining Hunger & Mission-Driven Culture

  • Focused on staying close to customers as a way to keep teams hungry and aligned.

  • Reinforced mission over hype, especially early on when distractions are high.

  • Belief in continuously disrupting themselves before others do.

7. Adaptation to External Shifts

  • Pre-pandemic: Younger customers were tech-savvy, but older business owners needed persuasion.

  • Post-pandemic: Going online became essential for survival—natural shift in mindset.

  • Rising use of AI tools to improve non-tech-savvy user experience, especially in rural or less digitized areas.

🛍️ Why the pandemic forced business owners online
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, many small business owners in India were hesitant or outright resistant to selling online, often due to a lack of digital literacy or trust in the process. However, the lockdowns in 2020 changed that overnight. Physical markets shut down, and only businesses that had some online presence continued to generate revenue. This became a wake-up call: going online was no longer optional. Meesho, already working with small merchants and home-based sellers (often women), became a vital bridge—helping offline businesses pivot quickly and survive in the new normal. The pandemic essentially compressed years of digital transformation into months, driving mass adoption of online commerce.

8. Grounded Business Strategy

  • Focused on low average order value but high transaction volume—targeting affordability and mass-market relevance.

  • Product experience shaped by cultural nuances (e.g., refund preferences for women without direct bank access).

  • India’s consumer base demands frugal innovation and inclusive design.

🔐 Cultural nuances: Why refund methods matter
One unexpected insight Meesho uncovered was around refund behavior. Many women sellers and buyers in smaller towns and cities did not have direct access to their own bank accounts in India's patriarchal society and so were not comfortable with bank-based refunds. Instead, they preferred alternative methods like storing the balance in an app wallet or using cash. These nuances might seem small, but they significantly affect user trust and retention—especially in markets with varying levels of digital and financial literacy.

9. Trust, Brand Building & AI

  • Trust must be earned—celebrity endorsements or shortcuts won’t sustain.

  • AI brings opportunity (e.g., accessibility), but also trust challenges, especially in India where many are still unfamiliar or hesitant with digital systems.

10. Personal Reflections

  • Being a founder is a long journey; importance of mental and physical well-being.

  • Shared entrepreneurial journey with his wife, where she had her own venture too; family support system played a key role, especially after having a child.

11. Looking Ahead

  • The surface of inspiration—what drives user interest online—is changing fast (currently shortform videos).

  • Staying relevant means understanding where users spend time and how tech shifts shape behavior.

If you’ve read this far, thank you!
If you found the insights valuable, do consider supporting the LinkedIn post by leaving a comment or sharing your thoughts. It really helps spark conversation and keeps the learning going. Would love to hear what resonated with you.

This article was written with AI assistance, based on my notes taken down during the talk.

Pratul Venkatesh