Google Considers Investing in Indian Social Commerce Smile?

Reports have emerged that Google is considering investing $50 million in Indian social commerce site Meesho. According to sources, Miho recently completed a $570 million funding round.

Early investors in the smile include Facebook, B Capital, Softbank, Sequoia Capital India, Y Combinator, and Elevation Capital. As a commerce service, it is characterized by connecting supplier resellers and customer third parties to social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram. A smile earns a sales commission when the proposed product resale buys from a supplier and sells it to a customer.

80% of resellers on this platform are women. From the outset, the company’s goal was for women to start their own business with no capital. As well as other e-commerce companies, it suffered severe damage from COVID-19 in 2020, but is now fully recovering, and has recently been renewing monthly sales records every month.

According to an official working on a social commerce effort recently launched by India’s largest e-commerce company, Flipkart, the recent rapid growth of the smile has been seriously discussed on Flipkart several times. According to founder Vidit Aatrey, as of April 2021, there were 13 million businesses using a smile and more than 100,000 suppliers. Since then, the company has tripled.

The stage is the world’s second-largest internet market, but e-commerce has not yet taken over retail significantly. However, it is predicted that the social commerce market will grow from $1 billion to $1.5 billion in 2020 to up to $20 billion in 2025.

According to the report, social commerce is home to more than 40 million small businesses across India, and 85% of those using social commerce are now small offline-focused retailers, so they are using social channels for new growth opportunities.

Google has pledged to invest $10 billion in India over the next two years and is already investing in Glance and DailyHunt. YouTube acquired SimSim, a social commerce platform, in July. In early October, Google is investing in Neobank platform Open. Related information can be found here.