Get familiar with Meesho’s three new digital categories — Mandi, Kirana and Daily Essentials — that are enabling resellers to remain successful even during lockdown

With a nation-wide lockdown brought on by the rapid spread of the novel Coronavirus, people across the country are looking for various ways to procure daily essentials, groceries and vegetables. Meanwhile, the deliveries of non-essential products have been temporarily banned, which means that this situation puts immense pressure on Meesho entrepreneurs. Fortunately, tough times don’t last, but tough people do. This was the perfect opportunity for Meesho to come up with a workable and scalabable plan B.

Meesho’s timely pivot during the lockdown exhibits some of its core values such as — Make Resellers Successful, Deep Dive & Solve Problems and Speed Over Perfection.

Immediately following the lockdown announcement, Meeshoites huddled together to come up with a contingency plan for these uncertain times. It was a no-brainer that Meesho forayed into Grocery at this time, and from that the idea to introduce three new essential categories came about.

Meesho Mandi

This brand new category, which basically allows customers to buy and resell fruits and vegetables, has been launched in seven cities across India, including, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Mumbai, Chennai, Ahmedabad, and Delhi.

With hyperlocal delivery systems, Mandi is able to deliver the products at the destination in three days. The creation of Mandi as a category is a perfect example of the Meesho value of Speed Over Perfection. As Project Owner for Groceries, Aastha Shah tells us, “The discussion to launch Meesho Mandi happened on Thursday, March 19, the work started the very next day, and by the next Thursday, March 26, it was launched on the Meesho app.”

Kirana

Kirana is another category that was added to the Meesho App recently, and within this category customers get to buy all grocery essentials including flour, oil, ghee, pulses, chips and read-to-cook goods, among others. “We did face some initial delivery-related hiccups in the pilot, but now, we have resolved most of those issues. In fact, the deliveries are now made in just a day’s time,” reveals Aastha.

Our Category managers and other backend problem solvers worked tirelessly to make Kirana a success, and they clearly exhibited the core value of Deep Dive & Solve Problems. Every customer feedback has given way to perfecting the process a bit more, for it to now successfully work in 29 different cities across the country, including, Agra, Gorakhpur, Jhansi and Siliguri.

Daily Essentials

Daily Essentials, though not new as a category on the Meesho app, has been revamped to include some of the lockdown and social distancing-specific products, including masks, sanitizers and other hygiene products. “Soon after the lockdown was announced, it became clear that our supply partners who deliver essentials can continue to do that, and our resellers, if they are able to reroute a little, can continue growing their business during this period,” explains Milan Partani, Associate Director — O/R.

This category has certainly worked out in the favour of our resellers, and Meesho is seeing a consistent rise in the number of resales for Daily Essentials. With this category Meesho was able to uphold the core value of Make Resellers Successful, especially during this difficult time.

Even though these categories were specifically introduced during the lockdown, Mandi, Kirana, and Daily Essentials will be part of the Meesho catalogue post-lockdown as well.

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