Meesho's bet on content commerce yielded 14.5 million paying users in 2024 as creator economy delivers

"We started live commerce (on Meesho app) around two years ago. It was only a year ago when we started to diversify with short form videos outside the Meesho app. We have partnered with 21,000 creators so far and plan to take this figure to 1 lakh by the end of this year," said Arunachalam.

What is Content Commerce?

Content commerce involves creating and distributing content like videos, blog posts, or social media posts, to educate and engage potential customers, ultimately driving them to transact on e-commerce platforms. For Meesho, its content commerce efforts are currently focused solely on the creator economy.

During 2024, Meesho saw a three-fold rise in order volumes via content commerce relative to the platform. Key categories like women’s western wear, jewellery, footwear, home decor and furnishing, kids wear and toys, as well as beauty and personal care saw a 10-fold increase in order volumes.

Content commerce is also proving to be an effective channel for Meesho to deepen its reach in its primary focus markets of tier II and beyond cities. The platform has seen a steady pickup in tier I market over the last year, but a majority of tractions for content commerce are being driven by tier II and beyond markets.

"For tier 2 and tier 3 regions, reaching them through other channels and networks can be quite expensive. We see content commerce as much more effective way to reach these audiences...We can, for instance, have an influencer from a tier 4 city, with a tier 4 audience, who can be successful with Meesho," Arunachalam said.

To capitalize on the opportunity for content driven commerce, the company has launched initiatives like Meesho Creator Club - an in-house affiliate program for creators, and Video Finds - short videos hosted directly on the Meesho app. It has also introduced Live Shop, where influencers and sellers showcase products, answer queries, and drive instant sales via real-time interactive sessions.

Intensifying Competition

Meesho's focus on content commerce has come at a time when its rivals, including Flipkart and Amazon, as well as quick commerce players like Blinkit, Zepto and Swiggy Instamart, have stepped up their efforts at influencer-driven shopping.

As per reports, quick commerce players are now allocating as much as 20 percent of their advertising budgets on influencer marketing. Influencers have also been driving a large proportion of e-commerce sales, especially during the festival season.

Meesho's Arunachalan said rural e-commerce focus is expected to be an advantage for the company, especially over tier I-focused quick commerce rivals.

"Other platforms look at content commerce as more of a marketing spend. What is unique about Meesho is that we are serving Bharat...For quick commerce players, we will probably have metro creators serving metro users. But our user base and business model are quite different than traditional companies," he said.

The Bengaluru-based firm is looking at content commerce to continue to drive growth going forward, and has set up a separate business unit for this strategy, to derive long-term value.

As the boom in content consumption grows, Meesho is confident that more shopping may get channelled through content commerce.