Meesho's logistics platform Valmo now handles 50% of orders, more than double from last year

Meesho's Valmo now handles 50% of orders, more than double from 22% last year

More than half of IPO-bound e-commerce platform Meesho’s orders are now being fulfilled via its in-house logistics platform Valmo, up from around 22 percent a year ago, the company said in its Annual Report for 2023-24, on March 26.

Within a year, the company’s logistics arm has scaled up to around 15,000 pin codes by around 6,000 logistics partners, creating as many as 85,000 jobs as of December 2024.

“In just one year since its launch, Valmo has not only enhanced efficiency but also fostered local entrepreneurship, created thousands of jobs, and supported sustainable growth within the logistics sector,” Meesho said.

As many as 1.3 billion orders were placed on the platform between April to December 2024.

Meesho has made significant improvements in its financial performance, in part due to operational efficiencies in its logistics division. Its adjusted loss, or the net loss minus cost of ESOPs was down 97 percent from Rs 1,569 crore to Rs 53 crore for FY24.

Costs went down in FY24 as Valmo helped Meesho lower its reliance on third-party logistics players for shipments, giving it more bargaining power.

“By optimizing our logistics processes, we have significantly reduced shipping expenses and improved delivery efficiency, allowing us to pass savings on to our users,” the company said.

Until February last year, Valmo was handling roughly 20-22 percent of Meesho’s orders, and the logistics arm had helped the company to slash its logistics cost by around five percent, Moneycontrol had reported earlier.

Meesho had earlier announced that Valmo had got micro-entrepreneurs in the logistics segment onboard to create a larger ecosystem and supply chain. The platform incorporates local logistics suppliers to provide shipment services to Meesho, making the logistics seamless, and helping the company’s sellers to save on operating costs.

This comes at a time when the e-commerce firm is hurtling towards an initial public offering (IPO) later this year, planning to raise around $1 billion at a valuation of $10 billion. Moneycontrol exclusively reported that the firm has already picked Morgan Stanley, Kotak Mahindra Capital and Citi as advisers for its IPO.

Meesho, despite being a late e-commerce entrant in 2015, has grown in size and scale and improved its profit profile despite competing against well-funded rivals such as Walmart’s Flipkart and Amazon. While Flipkart is the market leader in the e-commerce space, Meesho has grown its market share massively by focusing on Tier III markets and beyond, or the value-conscious buyer.

For FY22, Meesho clocked revenue of Rs 3,240 crore, increased to Rs 5,735 crore in FY23 and further exapanded to Rs 7,615 crore in FY24.