Vidit Aatrey: Transforming Indian ECommerce with Meesho

Amid perspectives that say that the eCommerce business is saturated and there is not much scope, there is this story of Vidit Aatrey, who proved them wrong.

Vidit, the Co-founder of Meesho, never looked to compete with Amazon or Flipkart. But what he looked for, was the opportunity to solve problems that the retailers and customers faced in small towns. This led to the huge success of this eCommerce giant.

Let’s dive into the biography and the success story behind this businessman who addressed all the challenges to make this business a success.

Vidit Aatrey - Biography

Vidit Aatrey - Early Life and Education

Vidit Aatrey wasn’t born into a lineage of successful entrepreneurs. He hails from a family that primarily did farming in Uttar Pradesh. With his father working at Delhi Jal Board, the waterworks department, their middle-class family lived in a very simple two-bedroom apartment in North-West Delhi.

Thus, he lived in a locality that was filled with Government employees. During early childhood, Vidit was encouraged by his father to choose a career path in civil services and chose to study at IIT Delhi as a step towards that.

Little did he know that making that choice would change his whole idea of the career path he wanted to take.

Once Vidit went through IIT, his worldview broadened. He realized that the world has many more career opportunities than that. He saw his seniors working in investment banks and running companies, which inspired him. Those four years at IIT Delhi transformed him. He made up his mind and returned home to tell his dad that he didn’t want a government job. He started exploring other opportunities.

Vidit Aatrey - Career

Vidit's path took a shift in 2012 when he accepted a management trainee position with ITC in Chennai during the campus placement. Many worked under him and that gave a strong start to his career.

However, Vidit discovered during the following two years that this conventional industry was moving slowly and adopting technology slowly. Concurrently, his pals in Bengaluru were climbing ladders and were up-to-date with new technology. Concern about losing out pushed Vidit to get in touch with his friend, Sanjeev Barnwal at InMobi and he landed in Bengaluru. After briefly working in InMobi for around a year, they left their jobs to work for a bigger plan.

Both of them worked out a plan to launch an eCommerce startup for small businesses. They created an app called Fashnear, which connected the local vendors with their customers. But, since the idea did not hit great success due to a few challenges, they tweaked it a bit to launch Meesho in 2015.

Vidit Aatrey - Meesho

Meesho was launched in 2015 by the two IIT batchmates Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal, and the parent company is still being called Fashnear Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

This is what he says about his company,

“We help people start an online business on Facebook, WhatsApp, or Instagram without having them invest in it”.

The company grew to be a groundbreaking eCommerce startup focused on empowering small businesses. At a time when the prevalent belief was that the eCommerce market was saturated, Vidit was undeterred by the naysayers.

He had to face many more challenges even after Meesho was launched. The shopkeepers did not benefit much from Meesho in terms of new customers or cost-effectiveness. So, once again, he made changes to the business model. The focus shifted majorly to the women who did not have their boutique and sold their products from home on WhatsApp and Facebook.

From here Meesho achieved many milestones in the upcoming years. It was selected to Y Combinator in 2016 and further grew to gain over 1 million resellers in 2018. Further in 2019, it became the first Indian startup to get an investment from Facebook for $25 million. In 2021, Meesho made an astonishing achievement of over 500k orders daily.

Vidit envisioned Meesho as a platform that would revolutionize the way small businesses operate, providing them with the tools and support needed to thrive in a competitive digital marketplace.

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Vidit Aatrey- Personal Investments

Vidit Aatrey has made 29 investments. Their latest investment was Pep on Oct 9, 2023.

Vidit Aatrey- Awards and Recognitions

Vidit has been awarded with awards as below:

• He was the winner of the Social Venture Challenge, Harvard World MUN, Singapore, 2011.
• He was enlisted in the Forbes 30 Under 30- India and Forbes 30 Under 30- Asia in 2018.
• He was also enlisted in the Entrepreneur 35 under 35 in 2019.
• He was also awarded the World's 50 Most Innovative Companies award by Fast Company
• He was also recognized as the Young Turk Startup of the Year by CNBC in 2020.
• He was among the Fortune 40 under 40 in 2021.
• He was also enlisted under Economic Times 40 under 40 in 2021.

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Vidit Aatrey - Quotes

Some of the famous quotes of Vidit Aatrey are as mentioned below:

FAQs

Who is Vidit Aatrey?

Vidit Aatrey is the co-founder and CEO of Meesho.

When was Meesho founded?

Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal founded Meesho in the year 2015.

What is Vidit Aatrey's education?

Vidit Aatrey did a BTech in Electrical Engineering from IIT Delhi.