'Don't believe Nykaa is a good representation of India e-commerce': Meesho co-founder

Meesho co-founder Vidit Aatrey was responding to a question on evaluating Falguni Nayar's Nykaa as an investor.

Meesho co-founder Vidit Aatrey believes that beauty and cosmetics e-tailer site Nykaa is not a good representation of India e-commerce in India because of its narrow customer base and category of products.

Aatrey shared the observation during a podcast WTF is e-commerce, hosted by billionaire and Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath on YouTube.

On being asked how one can evaluate Nykaa as an investor, the Meesho co-founder said, "I don't think that company (Nykaa) is a good representation of India e-commerce. It's very narrow in category and very narrow in terms of the customer base they serve."

"Their average order value is between Rs 1,500 and Rs 2,000. It's very high, it's super high so their segment exposure and category exposure cannot be a representation of the e-commerce market, that's what I believe."

The discussion revolved around investing in e-commerce in India during which Nikhil Kamath said that Nykaa offered a chance for Indian investors as opposed to Flipkart which is owned by Walmart which is not listed in India. Speaking about the business model of Nykaa, when Kamath asked about the possible competition between it and Meesho, Vidit Aatrey said that Falguni Nayar-led Nykaa wasn't a competition.

"I believe it's a very different business (than Meesho). We are a platform, they are a brand," he said.

Speaking about Meesho, Aatrey said that the company is valued at $5 billion. "We have around 14 crore people who buy from us every year, about a million small businesses, and in the last year we made a billion orders which is around 100 crores," he added.

Read more: E-commerce firm Meesho lays off 251 employees