A Decade of Reflection on Meesho
It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly 10 years since we, at Venture Highway, signed that first seed check for
@Meesho_Official in 2016. With the news of their upcoming IPO, I’ve been looking back at the email threads, the early product demos, and the "aha" moments that started it all.
What that decade has really reinforced for me is that Meesho’s journey was anything but linear: the company evolved through multiple product iterations—from the early Fashnear experiment in late 2015, to reseller-led commerce, and ultimately to the direct-to-consumer marketplace Meesho is today—while the core insight and our conviction in the founders stayed constant.
For me, the conviction to partner with
@viditaatrey and
@barnwalSanjeev wasn't just about e-commerce. It was about a behavior I had witnessed firsthand while building WhatsApp.
The "WhatsApp" Insight
During my time at WhatsApp, I saw something fascinating happening in India. Small business owners—boutique owners, home chefs, local artisans—were "hacking" WhatsApp to run their businesses. They were creating groups, sharing photos of inventory, and closing deals via chat. There was no shopping cart, no payment gateway, just trust and conversation.
When I met Vidit and Sanjeev, they weren't trying to force a Western e-commerce model onto India. They had noticed the same behavior. They understood that for the next 500 million Indians, commerce wouldn't look like a catalog; it would look like a chat.
The "TAM" Trap & The Valley of Death
But the path wasn't a straight line. After Y Combinator, Meesho hit a wall. They struggled to raise capital. Investors were passing left and right.
I distinctly remember a call from Ravi at Elevation Capital. He asked me, "Neeraj, why is no one funding this company? These are good guys, they are executing, and they are making progress. What am I missing?"
I told him the truth: "Investors are getting stuck on TAM (Total Addressable Market). They are looking at this through a Western lens where transaction values need to be high to make sense. But that is the wrong way to look at this deal. This isn't about basket size; it's about frequency and behavior."
Most people saw a small market; we saw a massive, unorganized economy waiting to be digitized.
These were also the moments when founder conviction mattered most. Even as the product evolved, Vidit and Sanjeev stayed anchored to their core user insight, and our job as early investors was to lean in through that ambiguity rather than step back and “wait for the final form” of the company.
Shared Roots
Vidit and Sanjeev being from IIT Delhi (where I also studied) gave us a shared starting point, but what really built our conviction was their resilience during those tough months. They were technical and data-driven, yet remarkably humble and willing to pivot. They were building for India, not just in India.
The Thesis that Built Venture Highway
Investing in Meesho in 2016—and doubling down in subsequent rounds—was more than just a portfolio decision. In many ways, Meesho was the thesis that led me to scale Venture Highway.
Back then, the narrative was often that Indian startups were copycats. Meesho proved that India could produce category-creating, world-class companies that solve uniquely Indian problems at scale. That conviction drove us to build Venture Highway to support founders capable of building enduring institutions, a mission the entire VH team has worked hard to support.
Going Global with General Catalyst
It is fitting that as Meesho steps onto the public stage, Venture Highway has also evolved. Our conviction in Indian founders is what led us to join forces with General Catalyst. What drew us to GC was how closely their seed philosophy mirrors what we lived through with Meesho: seeing seed as the unveiling of a hidden truth, backing exceptional people early, and leaning in when the path is still murky. Meesho’s evolution—from its Fashnear beginnings to the scaled direct-to-consumer marketplace it is today—is exactly the kind of non-linear founder journey that GC is set up to support: where others see risk in change, GC sees learning, resilience, and conviction. By merging our local expertise with GC’s global platform, we are now even better equipped to support the next generation of Vidits and Sanjeevs—helping them build world-class companies from India for the world.
To the IPO and Beyond
Watching this journey from a seed-stage pitch deck to a public listing has been one of the greatest privileges of my investing career. We have been there since the seed round and are proud to remain shareholders today, as the company enters this new chapter.
Vidit and Sanjeev, you have validated our belief that India is a cradle for world-class innovation. You’ve also reminded us that the most enduring companies are rarely built in a straight line - and that the real test of partnership is in those lows (and not the highs). Here’s to the next decade of building.