Meesho not in the business of deep discounting, focus on low cost app, says Nilesh Gupta

Festive season is always a time of excitement for people to not just cherish blissful moments with their loved ones but to also shop to their heart's content. The festive period also marks the time when brands deep dive to strike a chord with the audience through their offerings and campaigns.

Meesho, the online shopping app, has unveiled the Diwali campaign ‘Mega Blockbuster 2023’, in an attempt to create preference for the platform and instill confidence that they will provide the best deals, says Nilesh Gupta, senior director - growth, Meesho.

Conceptualised by Moonshot, the commercial features actors Pooja Hegde and Kapil Sharma, with the aim of giving access to buyers to have quality products at the best rate.

Speaking of the genesis, Gupta mentions how they got into consumer research and understanding the preferences of the buyers during this period. “I'm glad with the kind of work the team did over the last two – two-and-a-half months. I think there were maybe 10, 15 or more focus group discussions, individual customer interviews, wherein the team tried to understand what is the user's mental model.”

The research revealed some insights. For example, the festive period is the time when they are happy to shop for themselves and their family. This was followed by another insight, that a lot of people have some kind of disbelief on the discounts that are on offer, both online and offline, said Gupta.

Gupta explains that people witness 80 percent-90 percent off, but since a lot of consumers are tech savvy, they know that sometimes prices get jacked up and a very deep discount is shown on top of it.

Since Meesho is a low price app, and not in the business of deep discounting, that became their core insight to provide the best price for users. “And how do we bring that out in a quirky way is what became the foundation,” says Gupta.

Evolving target audience

From 2020-2021, women were the target audience of the platform. But since July 2021, the platform has been a horizontal e-commerce app where their target has been both men and women. From a share of incoming users also, there is a 50-50 mix of men and women. And, in terms of city tiers, a very healthy share is coming from metro tier one cities. “Whether people were new to e-commerce or not, there was a 30-40 percent app open jump,” states Gupta.

Media and marketing mix

Gupta entered the world of Meesho in 2021, which was then a very ‘women-centric’ or ‘women-focused’ platform. Since the platform’s target was the digital medium, television went unseen. But as the platform, which was very performance-marketing heavy, became horizontal, the focus on television was brought in. “Television and branding in general has been very instrumental in increasing our top-of-mind awareness. I think it's a very good balance between branding, performance marketing and some newer areas like influencers,” says Gupta.

Speaking of their media mix, television and digital are their two strongest pillars. This is followed by them making good use of WhatsApp and their website. But this year, their focus is not on print.

The reason for this, Gupta claims, is to be more from the return–on–investment maximisation point of view followed by the clutter seen in the print space.

Power of influencer marketing

From 2019-2022, Meesho invested heavily into influencer marketing. Gupta added that on YouTube, every month, the reach of #meeshohaul is worth upwards of 300 million. “So, we are reaching a substantial proportion of the YouTube audience purely from #meeshohaul videos. And more than 90 percent - 95 percent of them are all organic,” he states.

The senior director of Meesho explains that in the first two to three years, the platform partnered with influencers to create #meeshohaul trend and property. Gupta adds, “A lot of nano creators start making a lot of content on it to grow their channels. And, that's been a big plus point for us.”

Meesho Mall: Genesis and Goals

With the emergence of a variety of brands in different spheres catering to various needs, the authenticity of the brand and assurance stemming from it plays a vital role in the minds of the consumers. As Gupta puts it, there are a lot of regional and some national brands that keep coming out strongly as a need for their users.

This led to Meesho paying attention to the search trends on their platform. They understood that these are some of the things that users are on the lookout for. Hence, they spoke to the users, began working with brands last year to try and slowly create the right product market fit for brands and how they should succeed on their Meesho app.

Today, around 400 brands are working on Meesho Mall, covering categories like beauty and personal care, footwear, electronics, accessories, and a little bit of fashion.

2022 v/s 2023: What is different in the festive campaigns

In 2022, Meesho launched a festive sale campaign which featured well-known personalities like Ranveer Singh, Deepika Padukone, Rohit Sharma, Rashmika Mandanna, Kapil Sharma, Trisha Krishnan, Karthi Sivakumar, Ram Charan and Sourav Ganguly.

When Storyboard18 connected with Meesho’s Megha Agarwal, CXO, Growth, last year, she mentioned that the genesis of the campaign stemmed from their mission statement which was to democratise internet commerce both from the perspective of suppliers and users.

Gupta added to this. “I think last year was very grand for us because we were working with almost nine pan India celebs and there was a lot of buzz. And we wanted to truly showcase the grandeur of the festive season and in a way, bring out the scale of Meesho,” he said.

“For a lot of us, despite Meesho doing the kind of staggering order volumes it does, a lot of people didn't know how big it was. And that's what a lot of big A-league celebs actually help in bringing out. So that was the key job last year and hence we needed that kind of an army,” he adds.

This year, from January to June 2023, the e-commerce platform recorded $400 million in revenue, a media report states. Gupta noted that when it comes to categories, ethnic wear grabs maximum attention and the uptake is little bit higher. Thus, he highlights that in this festive sale, his goal is to get users to check Meesho before any purchase. He is confident that they will be elated with the best deals the platform would offer.