Proof of work- Meesho

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Proof of work- Meesho

How to increase Meesho's customer acquisition

Section	Name
Section 1	Meesho at a glance
Section 2	Meesho's Product Pitch
Section 3	Understanding the Product, Users and Market
Section 4	Hypothesis
Section 5	ICP Identification
Section 6	TAM
Section 7	Channel Selection for Meesho
Section 8	Organic Search
Section 9	Content Loop
Section 10	Paid Advertising
Section 11	Conclusion and Next Steps

Section 1: Meesho at a glance

Name	Meesho (short for Mer-e shop)
Founded	2015
Founders	Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal (graduates of IIT Delhi)
Headquarters	Bengaluru, India
Revenue	₹3,521 crore (H1 FY2023-24, up 37% YoY)
Profitability	Became India’s first profitable horizontal e-commerce platform in July 2023.
App Downloads	Over 500 million downloads as of H1 FY2023-24
Primary Market	India, targeting Tier 2+ cities and small business entrepreneurs.
Key Demographics	Over 50% of sellers are women; non-GST sellers onboarded from 20+ states recently.
Tech Advancements	AI-driven personalization tools and simplified user experience design
Meesho's Market Share	Meesho exhibited a 34 percent relative market share, as a % of MAUs, while Amazon India held a 31 percent market share.
Order Volume and Repeat Customers	In the last 12 months, Meesho's order volume grew by 43% YoY, with a notable 54% revenue growth and around 80% repeat customers.
Gross Merchandise Value	Meesho's current gross merchandise value (GMV) run rate exceeding USD 5 billion, with apparel contributing to approximately 50% of GMV, while beauty and personal care (BPC) and home and kitchen each contribute in the range of 8-10%.

Section 2: Meesho's Product Pitch

The ad shows a person sitting with their family in their living room on a sofa scrolling through Meesho’s app on their phone, and asking their family about what they need to purchase for the upcoming festive season, they are browsing through the app and it shows a colorful range of clothing, accessories, and home decor.

Narration:
"Looking for trendy clothes, stylish accessories, or the latest home decor, for your family all at unbeatable prices? Meesho has it all!" Download the Meesho app now and start shopping today! Meesho — Your one-stop shop for everything you love!

Cut to a happy family opening their packages from Meesho., thrilled with the quality, they are full of smiles and laughter!

Section 3: Understanding the Product, Users and Market

3.1 Understanding the Product

3.1.1. What is the fundamental need or want that the product is solving for?

Meesho is a three-way marketplace where buyers, sellers and resellers come together. It mission is to make ecommerce accessible for all.

3.1.2. What are the basic features and functionalities that the product provides?

These are the functionalities available on Meesho-

For Buyers-

View and search product by category, type and keyword
Buy a product - pay online or via COD
Return or replace a product
Review a product or read reviews

For Suppliers-

Enabling them to sell online at 0% commission.
Use Meesho suite of tools to grow their business and reach crores of customers
Get orders from customers and ship their producrs
Receive payments

3.1.3. What other ways are users using to solve the same problem? If it is a new category, how else were people solving the problem?

Before Meesho, users were solving the problem by buying from local sellers or resellers, through Facebook or other social media. There was no social marketplace for Tier 2 Tier 3 cities where sellers buyers and resellers could meet to buy and sell products. Resellers used Amazon or Flipkart but these ecommerce websites target affluent buyers.

3.2 Understanding Meesho's Users

Retailers- Meesho has 15M retailers as of 2021 with 9M of them women

Buyers- The majority of users are females aged 25–34

Link

3.3 Understanding the Market

Indian's overall ecommerce market is estimated to be $ 280 B with Tier 2 cities having a 35 percent of the overall market.
Flipkart is however the market leader (as of FY23) with a comfortable lead over its peers.
Meesho's main competitors are Flipkart, Amazon, GlowRoad Shopsy

Link

3.4 Meesho Product Stage

Meesho is in a mature scaling stage.

Over 500 million downloads as of H1 FY2023-24
Over 80% are repeat customers
Over 140 M customer transactions as of 2023

Section 4: Hypothesis

To increase Meesho's market share, Meesho needs to acquire more male customers and retailers/sellers.

Reasoning - Meesho's primary users are women aged 25–34, out of 15M retailers 9M are women

Section 5: ICP Identification

For the purpose of this project, we will only focus on male end users/customer acquisition for Meesho, we are not focusing on sellers/retailers that sell sports equipment (unisex), fitness and grooming products for men.

We will assume for the purpose of this POW, that we are able to adequately onboard sellers/resellers for sports equipment (unisex), fitness and grooming products for men. We will work on solving that problem in another POW!

Channels used- Slack, Family and friend circle.

Speaking to male users-

This was the list of open-ended questions used by me

What ecommerce websites do you currently use?
What are the main products you look at buying online?
Have you heard about Meesho?
Did you use Meesho?
What made you choose Meesho and how did you find out about it?
What did you not like about Meesho?
What is the one feature you would like to see on the platform?
Do you prefer using the web version or the app?
What is the most important factor you look at when shopping online?
What products you would like to buy online but you are not able to get adequate options for?
Do you do a mix of offline and online buying? If yes why so? If not, why so?

Data, Observations, and Insights-

Majority know about Meesho through word of mouth, friend circle and online ads
Some prefer Flipkart over Meesho as they have known Flipkart longer.
Majority of them were in the 20-45 age group and all of them were male.
Users like the variety of items on Meesho and the prices are affordable
For premium products they prefer to search on Amazon, Myntra and Flipkart
The users would like more products for men - fitness, men's grooming, games, puzzles and sports equipment.
Minimum order value is a problem on Amazon.
The quality of affordable items on Flipkart/Myntra/Amazon is not good.
They wish to purchase online, but due to limited range have to go to shops or buy from Amazon

Disclaimer:

The above data and insights need to be validated by a more in depth user survey using open ended questions and using focus groups.

ICPs for Meesho (Look at the male segment)

Elements	ICP 1	ICP 2	ICP 3
Age	<25 years	25-50 years	>50years
Monthly Income	<INR 50K	<INR 3L	>INR 3L
Employment Type	Student	Self Employed/Salaried	Self Employed/Salaried/Semi Retired
Marital Status	Single	Single/Married	Married
Social media	Youtube, IG/Facebook	LinkedIn, Youtube, Facebook	LinkedIn, Subscription based insights
What do they read/listen to?	Youtube Creators	Podcasts, influencers	Professional Advisors
Geo Location	Tier 1	Tier 2/Tier 3	Tier 2/Tier 3
Need	Low- as are still studying or have just started earning	High- need affordable items for self and family	Medium- there is a need but very much set in their ways and habits of shopping
Pain point	To get affordable options	Affordable options but with good quality and convenience of saving time	Variety of options
Solution	Meesho	Meesho	Meesho
Behaviour	Blockers and influencers to purchase	Willing to Pay	Can Pay
Goals	To save money	Good stuff at great prices , time saved can order at home	Save time and energy when buying online vs offline
Perceived value of the Brand	Consideration Stage	Decision Stage	Consideration Stage
Frequency of Use Case	High	High	Medium
Average Capability to Spend on Product	Low	High	High
Value Accessibility of the product	High	High	Low
Value Experience of the Product	High	High	Low
Blocker	Parents	NA	NA
Influencer	Friends Circle	Spouse, Family	Spouse

Prioiritized ICP

Elements	ICP 1 ✅	ICP 2 ✅	ICP 3
Adoption Curve	High	High	Low
Frequency	High	High	Low
Appetite to Pay	Medium	High	High
TAM	High	High	Low
Distribution Potential	High	High	Low

For Meesho targeted male customers we are prioritizing ICP 1 and ICP 2

ICP 1

A young male working in a Tier 1/Tier 2 city starting off in their career, so earning is less.
Wants to look good, be fit but has less options at affordable prices.
Needs affordable options at lowest price.
Primarily buying for self.
Is single.

ICP 2

Is a family man working in Tier2/Tier 3 city.
Needs a variety of options online.
Needs to save time - would prefer buying online than going to shops.
Interested in buying for self and family.
Main decision maker in the family.

Section 6: TAM

India's Total Population	1.4B	2023 statistic
India's Total Smartphone Users	780M	2023 statistic
Male Smartphone User Percentage	780 M *55%= 429 M	Assume ~55% male, social trends show higher male user of smartphones
Target Affluence Groups	429 M* 60%=257 M	We are looking value-conscious customers, generally in the lower-middle to middle-income groups, assuming that to be 60%.
Expected Purchase propensity	257 M *50%= 129 M	Assuming 50% of this group would like to shop online
TAM	129 M	Conservative estimation
Estimated annual purchase per user	INR 2000	Conservative estimation
Market Size	129 M * 2000=INR 250 B	INR 250 B

Section 7: Channel Selection for Meesho

Channel name	Cost	Flexibility	Effort	Speed	Scale
Organic	Low	Low	Low	Slow	High
Paid	Medium	High	High	High	High
Referral	Medium	High	Medium	Medium	High
Product Integration	High	Low	High	Slow	Low

Meesho's current marketing channels-

Channels	Traffic Acquired
Direct	52.03%
Organic Search	37.71%
Paid Search	Not reported explicitly approx. 4%
Social	3.73%
Mail	1.07%
Display	0.09%
Referrals	0.18%

Research Links-

Social Media Channel Breakup for Meesho

Social Media Platform	Traffic Contribution (%)	Notes
Facebook	50%	Widely used for targeted advertising to homemakers and small businesses Latterly Business Outreach
Instagram	25%	Focus on influencer marketing and visually engaging content Pangrow Business Outreach
YouTube	15%	Effective for video campaigns and tutorials promoting Meesho products Latterly Business Outreach
Other Channels	10%	Includes Twitter and LinkedIn for niche campaigns and overall brand visibility Pangrow .

Based on the above information the acquisition channels to be prioritized are

Organic Seach
1. SEO
2. Content Loops
Paid Search

Section 8: Organic Search

We used Ahrefs Free Keyword Generator

	Keyword	Volume	Keyword Difficulty
Use case	gym clothes for men online	>10000	Easy
	mens fitness clothing	<8000	Easy
	grooming products for men	<1000	Easy
	sports equipment for men	<1000	Medium
	men sports shoes under 1000	>3000	Medium
	online games	>10000	Hard
Use case topic	mens clothing	>2000	Easy
	mens fitness clothing	>1000	Medium
Brand Name	Meesho	>1M	Hard
	meesho online shopping	>10000	Easy
Competitor	zudio online	>10000	Easy
	glowroad	>10000	Medium
	flipkart	>10 M	Hard
	amazon	>100K	Easy

Some keywords to be targeted for content are-

Gym clothes for men online
Men's fitness clothing
men sports shoes under 1000
Online games
grooming products for men

App Store Optimization (ASO) -

It is suggested to have to have ASO in place
Google Play should be prioritized over Apple Store as our targeted users use Android Devices

We can do this by -

Paid ads highlighting Meesho- when searching for Apps on the play store
Optimizing Current App features for Organic Traffic

Below is a rough framework of the ranking factors on Google Play and their priorities

Ranking Factor	Priority	Description	Best Practices
App Title and Keywords	High	Title carries the most weight for search ranking.	Concise, keyword-rich titles (≤30 characters);
App Description & Metadata	High	Keywords in the short and long description enhance discoverability.	Optimize short descriptions
App Ratings & Reviews	High	High ratings (4.5+) and positive reviews signal quality and improve rankings.	Response to reviews
Installs (Volume & Velocity)	High	Apps with high and sustained install rates rank better.	Paid ads, promotions, and influencer partnerships influence installs
Retention Rate	High	Apps with better user retention and low uninstall rates rank higher.	Improved UX and less friction leads to seamless onboarding
App Updates	Medium-High	Regular updates signal app activity and quality improvements.	Regular updates, focusing on big fixes and feature improvement
User Engagement Signals	Medium	Metrics like session length, DAU/MAU, and in-app interactions affect rankings.	Gamification, rewards, and personalized features can improve engagement
App Size & Performance	Medium	Smaller apps with faster load times rank better due to better user experience.	Optimize App size for less no of crashes and better experience
App Icon & Screenshots	Medium	Visuals improve click-through rates (CTR), affecting rankings indirectly.	Professional, feature-rich screenshots.
Category & Local Rankings	Low-Medium	Apps with optimized categorization and localization gain better rankings in regional searches.	Most relevant app category targeted for localized regions
Backlinks & External Signals	Low	External traffic to the app page enhances ranking via backlinks and promotions.	Running PR campaigns, good reviews on blogs, and leveraging social media.

Section 9: Content Loop

Organic Content Loop

Content Loop	Hook	Generator	Distributer
Loop 1- Users create fun look, share on website, fun activity, share with friends and family	Looking to upgrade your fitness game but on a budget? Look no further, up your fitness game without breaking your bank, create a look using Meesho's fitness wear and get featured on our website!	Customer/User	IG, Youtube, In App , WA messaging
Loop 2- Users are inspired and motivated to upload and take part in their favorite sports activity, they share with family and friends	Buy your favorite sports equipment on Meesho, post a photo playing your favorite game share with your friends and family with the #Meeshoupsmyfitnessgame, and win a chance to meet your favorite sport person.	Customer/User	In App, Social Media, IG Youtube
Loop 3- Users are interested in learning about skincare routine- they read the article and explore the app	Wanting to start your skin care game but don't know how? With Meesho's new article on Men's 3 step skin care routine we have go you covered!	Customer/User	Email Campaign, In App Push notification

These are the below steps applicable for the content loop-

Curiosity fuels exploration of Meesho App--> App download--> Onboarding--> Activation Metric--> First Order

Section 10: Paid Advertising

Section 10.1- Calculating Life Time Value of a Customer

LTV = Average Order Value * %margin * frequency

Frequency = No. of orders / No. of transacting users

Metrics	Value	Link
CAC	Rs. 150	E-commerce: Meesho's cash burn reduced by 90% between Jan-Dec 2022, ET Retail
AOV	Rs. 450	Meesho Is 1st Horizontal Ecommerce Portal To Turn Profitable; IPO Expected In Next 12-18 Months! - Trak.in - Indian Business of Tech, Mobile & Startups
No. of orders	1.180 B (843M *1.4)	Meesho sees 40% year-on-year surge in orders during this year’s festive sale - BusinessToday Meesho FY24 Revenue Jumps 33% to Rs 7,615 Crore Amid Reduced Losses \|
No. of transacting users	145 million	E-commerce unicorn Meesho’s revenue jumps 33% to Rs 7,615 crore in…
Frequency of purchase	8.14 orders per user annually	No of orders/ no of users
% Margins	15%	(Commissions on logistics + Ad revenue is 15-25%,) we have considered a conservative estimation

LTV	351
CAC:LTV	= 0.27~ 1:3

As CAC: LTV is 0.27, paid ads will be a good option for Meesho

Assumptions:

The data from various sources are accurate
The Margins are within the benchmark considered.

10.2. Social Media Ads

Narrative: Self care bhi, budget bhi only on Meesho! Affordable sports, grooming, and fitness fashion for men. Ab khud ka dhyan rakhna ar stylish dikhna har kisi ke liye.

ICP 1

Audience: Males <25 years

Channel: Youtube, Instagram, TV

Focus: Style and within budget affordable fitness wear

Creative 1: Meesho ke fitness wear, sports gear aur grooming essentials se apna vibe aur confidence set karo! Budget ka tension mat lo, style aur self-love ke saath apni lifestyle ko next level pe le jao,
Meesho ke saath apna journey shuru karo aur apna style define karo!

ICP 2

Audience: Males 25-50 years

Channel: Youtube, Instagram, TV

Focus: Affordability fitness wear available at your fingertips

Creative 2: Meesho ke fitness wear, sports gear aur grooming products se apna style aur confidence aur behtar banaiye! Budget ki chinta chhodo, apni lifestyle aur health ko naye level tak le jao.
Meesho ke saath apna everyday look aur fitness journey redefine karke apne goals achieve kariye!

Campaign Details:

Day 0- Teaser
Day 1- Campaign Launch

Day 2-3 - Engagement Content

Day 4- Sales and Special offers

Copies to be tested:

ICP1 : Ab khud ka dhyan rakhna ar stylish dikhna har kisi ke liye.

ICP2: Apna khayal aur style maintain karna har umar mein zaruri hai. Meesho ke saath aap apna style aur fitness journey aasani aur convenience ke saath manage kariye!

10.3. Google Ads:

Target age groupL 18- 50 years.

Location: Tier 2+ cities

Key words:

Mens fitness clothing
Sports equipment
Men's grooming
Other keys as per the Organic Section

Link

Section 11: Conclusion and Next Steps

To increase Meesho's customer aquisition, we need to look at the male customer segment ages <25 years, and 25-50 years.

The potential size of the price is INR 250 B.
The path to the prize is through offerings targeted at the men segment, sports equipment, gaming, grooming, fitness wear (outside of what Meesho currently offers.
The cost of the prize is the growth initiatives undertaken for scale up initatives.

END OF POW