iNDICA NEWS BUREAU-
US internet giant Google is in talks to invest $50-$75 million in India’s social commerce platform Meesho, indicating the search giant’s focus on backing promising Indian startups like Dunzo and InMobi’s Glance.
Meesho, a startup that is already backed by Facebook, has enabled over 13 million individual entrepreneurs to start their own online businesses with zero investment, bringing the benefits of e-commerce to more than 45 million customers in the country.
In September, Meesho raised $570 million from US-based asset manager Fidelity and Eduardo Saverin’s B Capital. Google’s investment will take the round size to over $600 million.
With this new investment, the company aims to build a single digital ecosystem for 100 million small businesses and hire the best talent in the industry, the media reported on Friday, October 22.
They also plan to use the fresh capital to become a consumer-facing e-commerce entity that can compete effectively against dominant players Amazon India and Walmart-owned Flipkart.
Founded in 2015 by Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal, Meesho began its journey as a reseller platform in the social commerce space, where its large base of women resellers sold products in the low-end, unbranded and long-tail e-commerce segment.
Google’s latest investment will take Meesho’s total financing to over $900 million so far this year, including $300 million that it raised from SoftBank Vision Fund II in April.
Google has made a slew of investments in India through Google Capital and most recently from its $10 billion India Digitization Fund which it announced in July last year. Its video sharing platform YouTube acquired video social commerce startup Simsim in July.
Google has in the last couple of years doubled down its investments in startups, focusing on content and commerce.
It has invested $4.5 billion in Reliance Industries’ Jio Platforms, and led an investment of $145 million in InMobi’s Glance, which also owns a short-video platform, Roposo.
The technology behemoth has also invested in VerSe Innovation, the parent company of Indian content and news aggregator Dailyhunt. Recently, it participated in DotPe’s Series A funding round, where it raised $27.5 million.
