New Delhi, Aug 26 : The homegrown social commerce platform Meesho has closed its grocery business known as Superstore in over 90% of cities in India (except Nagpur and Mysuru) and resulted in many job loss.
According to an Inc42 report, more than 300 workers have been laid off from their their jobs after the closure of Meesho Superstore.
When contacted, the company did not respond to the development.
In April, Meesho rebranded Farmiso to Superstore, with an aim to emphasize its ongoing commitment to meet the needs of consumers for the daily necessities in Tier 2 markets and beyond.
The following month the company laid off over 150 workers, mainly from Farmiso as it sought to incorporate its supermarket operations into the main application.
The platform for social commerce has cut off over 200 workers in the initial round of the epidemic.
According to the Inc42 report, “low revenue and a high cash burn were the main reason for the company’s decision to close its operations in the majority of the cities” this time.
Meesho Superstore was operational in six states namely Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra.
The report also mentioned the fact that Meesho gave a two-month pay period as a severance payment to those who were laid off.
Vidit Aatrey, founder and CEO of Meesho has stated that the company was looking at integrating Meesho Superstore with its core application.
“What began as an experiment in Karnataka is currently gaining positive growth across the six states.In line with our user-first philosophy this integration will offer millions of Meesho users with a single shopping experience, and also give us the opportunity to create more synergies across various areas like the acquisition of customers, technology, talent and product,” he had said in an announcement.
Meesho launched an experiment in Karnataka to allow online grocery shopping at a reasonable cost and the company set out to create a Superstore accessible in 12 states before the end of 2022.
The Meesho marketplace gives small-sized businesses, which includes small and medium enterprises (SMBs) micro small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) and individuals access to millions of customers, spanning over 700 categories Pan-India payments, logistics, and services for customer support.
Meesho recently hit 100 million transactions.From March 2021 onward, the transaction users on the platform has increased 5.5 times, while the number of transactions has grown 9X to reach 72 million in the same time the company claimed.
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