Redseer advised Meesho on its IPO journey: know what we did and how we did it.

Executive Summary 

Meesho, India’s leading value-focused e-commerce platform and the country’s largest by placed orders and transacting users, partnered with Redseer to shape the industry narrative for its IPO. Redseer delivered a comprehensive, evidence-led view of India’s fast-evolving retail ecosystem—capturing the structural shifts powering digital adoption, the opportunities across categories, and the business-model innovations reshaping online retail (or e-commerce).

This work provides a clear, forward-looking foundation on the scale, headroom, and long-term potential of value-focused e-commerce platforms such as Meesho.

About the Client 

Meesho is India’s leading value-focused e-commerce player and the leading e-commerce player in terms of annual Placed Orders and annual transacting users in the last twelve months ended September 30, 2025. It operates on a platform-based play, aggregating an extensive base of consumers, sellers, and logistics partners, enabling the provision of a wide product assortment at price points that are affordable for the bulk of India’s value-conscious consumers.

While Meesho is a multi-category player, it has demonstrated strong leadership in the lifestyle categories. As of the first quarter of FY2026, Meesho recorded the highest Gross Value of goods sold in the Fashion category among e-commerce platforms and listed multi-category retail companies in India. Further, in the last twelve months ended September 30, 2025, Meesho has the highest Placed Orders in Home, kitchen and furnishing among e-commerce players in India, and is amongst the top three e-commerce players in terms of Placed Orders in Beauty and personal care, inclusive of Baby and mother personal care.

The Strategic Imperative

• Layout India’s complex & evolving retail landscape, shaped by rising consumption, growing digital adoption, and increasing participation from the deeper demographic pockets

• Assess & quantify the degree and kind of fragmentation in India’s retail supply, enabled by small-scale sellers, typically unbranded or regional brands, leading to the creation of unorganized retail comprising an inefficient supply chain comprising multiple small-scale intermediaries

• Evaluate the limitations of unorganized retail to provide the appropriate product assortment at affordable price-points, leading to the rise of organized retail formats, including e-commerce.

• Outline India’s e-commerce growth story, considering the headroom available for expansion in each category and the importance of assortment width & low-ticket servicing to unlock the available opportunity, in line with how the story has played out in mature e-commerce markets

• Study the rise of the value-focused e-commerce model to enable this unlock, while elaborating on the key tenets of this model, including consumer journeys & engagement, seller value proposition, logistics efficiencies, and monetization.

• Quantify the total addressable market for value-focused e-commerce in India as per category-level addressability and the long-term growth potential, while accounting for the global parallels.

• Establish the relative positioning of value-focused e-commerce in India’s retail landscape in terms of growth, profitability, and capital efficiency.

• Provide a clear analytical foundation to support disclosures, positioning, and market communication for the IPO documentation.

Outcomes & Impact 

• Established the humungous scale of India’s retail, which is projected to reach US$1.4–1.6 trillion by FY2030, supported by India’s favourable economic growth led by a rising middle class, urbanization, and a growing workforce.

• Demonstrated the high degree of fragmentation in India’s retail supply, with more than 70% of retail spending driven by regional brands and unbranded products, even in the long term.

• Outlined the shifting channel dynamics in India retail from unorganized to organized formats, with e-commerce emerging as the fastest growth format, projected to grow at 20-25% CAGR in the next 5 years and drive 12-13% retail spends by FY2030.

• Detailed the key factors contributing to the projected e-commerce growth in India, particularly the accelerated digital adoption by consumers, increasing digitization of the fragmented retail supplier base, and declining logistics costs that enable low ticket servicing.

• Outlined the evolution of value-focused e-commerce and convenience-focused e-commerce as two distinct models serving different consumer needs, and how value-focused e-commerce players are positioned to lead the next wave of e-commerce user acquisition.

• Benchmarked value-focused e-commerce vs other organized retail models in India, and also vs value-focused e-commerce models in global markets, to establish the model’s growth potential and superiority in terms of capital efficiency.

What This Means for the Industry 

India’s e-commerce industry is entering a slightly mature phase, wherein the next wave of growth will be driven by specialized business models, which could hinge on different aspects of customer value proposition, including speed & convenience, value, assortment, or even product categories.

Value-focused e-commerce is now an established business model in the industry, which aims to deliver the widest product assortment at the lowest possible price point. The model is thus well positioned to take e-commerce to India’s masses and get the next 200 million shoppers to transact online. Historical trends indicate that value-focused e-commerce has been growing faster than the industry and gaining share within India’s e-commerce. Further, Mature e-commerce markets such as China & Indonesia demonstrate that value-focused e-commerce players have the ability to dominate the industry in the long term and are a sustainable play.

Through value-focused e-commerce, we are witnessing a structural shift in India’s e-commerce industry, which is expected to not just demonstrate growth in the near term but is here to stay and lead the market in the long term.

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