Vidit Aatrey built Meesho as an e-commerce brand with a difference; here's how

"Sometimes an organisation doesn’t need a solution; it just needs clarity,” writes Ben Horowitz in The Hard Thing About Hard Things—a book Vidit Aatrey often revisits. That clarity, it seems, came early to him.

In 2015, Aatrey and his IIT Delhi batchmate Sanjeev Barnwal launched Meri Shop—or Meesho—with a mission to empower India’s small entrepreneurs. Ten years on, Meesho has grown from a social commerce idea to one of India’s largest e-commerce marketplaces, with a $6.2 billion GMV run rate and an 8.9% market share. GMV, or gross merchandise value, represents the total monetary value of goods and services sold on a platform, before deductions.