Social mobile-commerce startup Meesho has raised $3.1 million from SAIF Partners and its existing investors Y Combinator and Venture Highway, reports The Economic Times. The Bangalore-based social ecommerce startup allows people to manage their e-tailing businesses via social networks such as WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook. Meesho, is a mobile app which essentially connects suppliers to resellers, largely housewives or small business owners, who then use channels such as WhatsApp promote these products within their network. The company plans to utilise funding money to hire tech and business operation teams, and for acquiring more resellers through community engagement and referrals, as per the ET report. Previous Funding In August 2016, Meesho had raised undisclosed amount of funding from group of angel investors like VH Capital, Kashyap Deorah, Rajul Garg, Oyo Rooms’ Maninder Gulati, Abhishek Jain, Jaspreet Bindra among others. Prior to that, in July 2016, Meesho was selected by Y Combinator for a three-month programme based in US. As part of its programme, the accelerator invests $120,000 in startups against 7% equity stakes. Competition Social network biggies like Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook already has offerings for small business owners. Apart from these, Meesho competes with players like Shopmatic, Zepo, Kartrocket and Shopify. -In June, Singapore based e-commerce platform for sellers, Shopmatic raised $5.7 million in a round of pre-Series A funding from ACP Pte Ltd and Spring SEEDS Capital Pte Ltd. -In March last year, KartRocket raised $ 2 million in Series B round from a Japanese investor. It had earlier, in January 2016, raised $6 million from Bertelsmann India Investments, Nirvana Digital India…
