Meesho Leverages AI Voice Agents and Vernacular Technology to Drive Growth Ahead of $5.6 Billion IPO

Indian E-Commerce Firm Meesho Expands Vernacular AI Voice Agents Ahead of IPO | AIM

As the company prepares for its IPO, Meesho plans to enhance the shopping experience with AI-driven personalisation and vernacular voicebots. Indian e-commerce firm Meesho has developed a real-time voice agent using ElevenLabs text-to-speech to automate customer support in Hindi and English. It manages queries without human intervention, covering order delays, cancellations, and refunds, while reducing average handling time, according to Eleven Labs. "Voice AI is changing how businesses in India interact with their customers. Meesho's deployment shows what's possible when multilingual, natural-sounding speech becomes the interface," said Siddharth Srinivasan, GTM India, ElevenLabs. The company is set to open subscriptions for its three-day initial public offering (IPO) sale starting on December 3, with a price band of ₹105 to ₹111 per equity share. Ahead of the IPO, the company's report said it is deepening its AI capabilities through its Meesho AI Labs initiative, aiming to institutionalise long-term, frontier AI innovation. The team has built AI-driven systems that personalise the shopping experience, such as optimising product rankings and tailoring recommendations. Meesho AI Labs has also worked to improve the customer experience through vernacular voicebots that leverage generative AI to resolve queries more naturally and intuitively for shoppers in smaller towns and rural areas. Key focuses of Meesho AI Labs also include creating language models tailored for Indian consumers, enhancing the shopping journey with agentic AI, improving transaction risk management, and increasing the effectiveness of advertising through AI. The company intends to build and roll out technology products, including various logistics management systems and content creator technologies, to optimise fulfilment, content generation, and seller operations at scale, Meesho said in a report. "We are also currently piloting the externalisation of our AI-enabled support services to third parties," the company added. Additionally, Meesho Networks was set up in April 2025, "with the objective of commercialising AI technologies and solutions." The company intends to continue building its technology stack to "reduce manual overheads and improve process efficiency across the platform." They aim to develop technology products, including logistics management systems and content creator tools, to enhance fulfilment, content generation, and seller operations. Designed for Meesho's low-cost environment, these systems will leverage automation to expedite cataloguing and product discovery, the report said. As per Reuters, Meesho aims for a valuation of up to $5.6 billion in its upcoming IPO, which is projected to reach $170-$190 billion by 2030, according to a Bain and Flipkart report.

Indian e-commerce firm Meesho leans on AI, new business lines to drive growth

BENGALURU, Dec 1 (Reuters) - SoftBank-backed Indian e-commerce firm Meesho is doubling down on artificial intelligence and new business lines to expand its user base and move towards profitability, founder and CEO Vidit Aatrey told Reuters in an interview. The firm, which is seeking a valuation of up to $5.6 billion through its initial public offering, competes with Amazon.com and Walmart-owned Flipkart in India's online retail market, which is expected to reach $170-$190 billion by 2030, according to a report by Bain and Flipkart. Its three-day share sale will begin on December 3, with shares expected to debut on India's main stock exchanges on December 10. Meesho has carved out a niche by offering low-priced products without charging sellers a commission, a practice Aatrey said it does not intend to change. The company plans to invest in chat and voice-based AI agents to make shopping easier for first-time users, especially in smaller towns and rural areas where many shoppers are coming online for the first time. Additionally, Meesho wants to invest heavily in technology and marketing "to keep growing" its transacting user base, which jumped 30% in the 12 months ending September 30. Part of this will be scaling up Valmo, its logistics aggregator platform, which Aatrey described as "a big focus" aimed at reducing delivery costs. Aside from tech, the Bengaluru-based firm is also preparing to integrate financial services, including buy-now-pay-later options and short-term credit facilities for sellers, borrowing from the playbook of global e-commerce giants that have improved margins through logistics and financial products. "We look at financial services as a large, long-term, bottom-line opportunity," he said. It is also exploring a push into grocery, one of the most competitive segments in Indian e-commerce, according to Aatrey. Meesho's revenue rose 29.4% to 55.78 billion rupees ($622.96 million) in the first half of fiscal 2026, while its losses narrowed 72.1% to 7 billion rupees, according to its IPO prospectus. ($1 = 89.5400 Indian rupees) (Reporting by Haripriya Suresh in Bengaluru; Editing by Dhanya Skariachan and Janane Venkatraman)