Meesho, an e-commerce company backed by Softbank, announced on Friday that it had expanded its platform to add eight new vernacular languages to reach its target market of 377 million people worldwide. In addition, Meesho has introduced Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, and Odia to its platform to attract customers from the region.
This allows Meesho customers to place and track orders in their chosen language, pay for items using an Android phone, and access account and product information.
“It is important to note that around 50% of our users are new to e-commerce and have probably never transacted on such platforms before. By introducing vernacular languages on the platform, Meesho aims to eliminate language barriers. This is a natural step in our journey of becoming the single shopping destination for the next billion users in India,” Meesho chief technology officer Sanjeev Barnwal said in a statement.
Last year, Meesho introduced Hindi as a language option on the platform, which has seen a high adoption rate of 20% to date.
“The company aims to target a potential user base of around 377 million, as per data shared by Kantar ICUBE 2021. The majority of Meesho customers come from tier 2 and beyond cities like Ahmedabad, Vadodara and Jamshedpur and non-Hindi-speaking states, where English or Hindi may not always be the language of choice,” the statement said.
Meesho claims that since March 2021, the number of users transacted on its platform has increased roughly 5.5 times, and the number of products available has increased nearly 9 times to about 72 million.
Meesho stated that customers from tier 2 and above markets, who make up about 80% of all customers, had been a critical factor in the company’s success.
