Small sellers are the heart and soul of Meesho. Most of our long-tail sellers are small in scale and revenue — generating only INR ~2,62,500 monthly. In fact, ~63% of the businesses registered with us work with less than 5 employees. Most of them started out because they wanted to do “something of their own, and not work for someone else.”
Most often individually run or family-owned, some of their stories are inspirational and highlight their grit, conviction and will to grow.
Either they need financial support, or access to a platform with the right users to scale their business. The latter is where we come in.
Since Day 1, Meesho’s core focus has been to democratise e-commerce for Bharat. To truly achieve that, we give equal growth opportunities to all sellers, especially small sellers, who are often under-represented on other platforms.
So, what have we done differently?
We’ve taken some industry-first initiatives to ensure our policies give equal opportunities to sellers of any scale to do business with us. We have strategically stayed away from policies that are partial to large sellers/ brands. Our business values help us attract small sellers disproportionately compared to other platforms. These include:
Market making - The target audience of other e-commerce platforms are moneyed, metro /tier 1 city dwellers. Additionally, they see more brand-based demand. In comparison, most of Meesho’s target audience seeks lower price points. Our products, features, marketing, and ad spends, are all targeted to this audience that demands unbranded, lower-priced products.
Negligible big brand competition - 60% of the total selection on our platform costs less than $4 (approx. INR 300 - 320) and 95% of the total selection on our platform is unbranded, supplied by small sellers. Unlike other e-commerce platforms where branded products make up a big chunk of the product range, our focus is entirely on long-tail sellers.
Low cost of doing business - Many small sellers are low on capital, so the commission levied by the selling platform would be an added burden. We adopted the practice of 0% commission over a year ago, which was unheard of in the e-commerce landscape at the time.
Convenient Cataloging - Other platforms have higher threshold guardrails for uploading catalogues. They require several inputs, which adds friction for sellers. For example, requiring multiple shots, close-up shots, and model shots — which also means expensive photoshoots. On the other hand, Meesho sellers are required to give a far lesser number of inputs, and can even upload photos that they click on their phones themselves at home or at the store.
No private labels - Keeping our mission to democratise e-commerce in mind, we want to ease the small seller’s journey to success and not add further hurdles. Hence, we do not have in-house labels/brands competing with them, unlike other e-commerce platforms.
Our Diwali Sale 2023 has been an exhibit of our seller-inclusive mindset
One of the biggest challenges we face with improving the sale participation of small sellers is reaching out to them. Even last year, we were only able to reach out to our top sellers, who made up less than 2% of our transacting seller base. Consequently, only 20-25% of our transacting seller base participated during the sale.
But, with focused efforts, we managed to increase our seller opt-ins for our monthly sale events by over 4X in a matter of 9 months!
Pretty cool, right?
So, how did we actually do this?
In 2021, our long-tail sellers weren’t reached out separately for sales participation. We realised if we truly wanted to democratise e-commerce for Bharat, we needed to create conditions that empower all sellers to do business at these sales.
Reaching out, hand-holding, and telling our sellers that they can grow 10X if they participate was imperative. We started the opt-in process operationally, through forms, to prove that doing awareness drives specifically for long-tail sellers was working. This worked out marvellously.
Awareness
Earlier, we primarily reached out to head sellers during sale season through email and KAM i.e. one-on-one agent calls. To reach a broader base of long-tail sellers and not just those sellers who were familiar with the platform, we made 3 major changes:
- We included more modes of communication with a broader reach such as emails, WhatsApp messages and YouTube videos
- We targeted these communications to ALL sellers
- We included automated Interactive voice responses (IVR) to reach out to all sellers
The first two points are self-explanatory. But let’s take an in-depth look at the third one —
Our initial telephonic communications were completely KAM-based, which had limited efficiency. They are resource-intensive (require agent hiring and training) and don’t cover the ground that other scalable channels such as WhatsApp and emails do. This method also sees a higher call drop-off (DND/Busy).
However, KAM-based reach outs helped encourage our sellers to participate. So, we continued new seller reach outs through these one-on-ones. Agents would call and educate them on sale processes so that all their doubts were cleared on the spot. Sale participation was made a core module of their onboarding process. Agent calling had less incremental value with already onboarded and trained sellers since they didn’t need as much training. IVR acted as a basic nudge and kept older sellers updated.
We also hosted educative webinars for our older sellers, beginning 15 days prior to the sale. These included benefits of sale participation, how to opt-in (live demo) and best operational practices during sale days.
Empowerment
With a Problem First Mindset, we were able to simplify the process of signing up for sale participation for sellers with a product-centric solution. Earlier, the sellers were given a form based opt-in, and the focus was on creating a method which didn’t require us to reach out to long-tail sellers and take down their details to register them.
It has evolved into a product-based opt-in process within the platform. The focus is on awareness and adoption. They can participate directly from the supplier panel by clicking on “participate.” No more pesky forms. The platform also allows them to set discounts on all their products, with different discounts on different products.
For those sellers who have clarity on the state of their business for the next few months, we encourage them to opt-in for the monthly sales for the next three months in one go. This also ensured higher participation with lower reach-outs.
We also introduced seller testimonial videos on the app, YouTube, and Instagram, in which sellers highlighted their positive experiences of doing business on the app. This helped create a sense of community and trust among them.
Infrastructure
- Our opt-in tool led to a ~50% jump in seller participation in the very first month of the feature’s launch.
- We introduced discount recommendations based on product history and the performance of the seller. They can either choose this or revise product discounts at their discretion.
- We shared personalised Success Reports/Sale Performance Report post sale to drive repeat participation. This usually includes benchmarking of their order performance within their category and a comparison with their business-as-usual orders.
Each of these smaller initiatives, along with our 0% commission model, led to higher orders and user traction on sale events, particularly the Diwali sale event - “Mega Blockbuster Sale” with record 3.34 crore orders. It empowered small sellers and opened the windows of opportunity for them to be on equal footing with head sellers, making e-commerce inclusive.
If you want to be part of Meesho’s impactful journey to democratise e-commerce for Bharat, check out our careers page.
Credits:
- Written and compiled by Sheeba Mammen (LinkedIn, Twitter)
- Illustrated by Shoumita Dhar (LinkedIn, Dribble)
- Special thanks to Karan Issar, Swapnil Rai, Anish Bansal, Shubham Mazumdar, and Rahul Kumawat
