Vidit Aatrey: Transforming Indian ECommerce with Meesho

Vidit Aatrey co-founded Meesho with Sanjeev Barnwal after spotting an opportunity to bring small businesses and consumers online. Here’s his journey from IIT Delhi and ITC to building and leading Meesho. Amid perspectives that say that the eCommerce business is saturated and there is not much scope, there is this story of Vidit Aatrey, who proved them wrong. Vidit, the Co-founder of Meesho, never looked to compete with Amazon or Flipkart. But what he looked for, was the opportunity to solve problems that the retailers and customers faced in small towns. This led to the huge success of this eCommerce giant. Let’s dive into the biography and the success story behind this businessman who addressed all the challenges to make this business a success. Vidit Aatrey wasn’t born into a lineage of successful entrepreneurs. He hails from a family that primarily did farming in Uttar Pradesh. With his father working at Delhi Jal Board, the waterworks department, their middle-class family lived in a very simple two-bedroom apartment in North-West Delhi. Thus, he lived in a locality that was filled with Government employees. During early childhood, Vidit was encouraged by his father to choose a career path in civil services and chose to study at IIT Delhi as a step towards that. Little did he know that making that choice would change his whole idea of the career path he wanted to take. Once Vidit went through IIT, his worldview broadened. He realized that the world has many more career opportunities than that. He saw his seniors working in investment banks and running companies, which inspired him. Those four years at IIT Delhi transformed him. He made up his mind and returned home to tell his dad that he didn’t want a government job. He started exploring other opportunities. Vidit's path took a shift in 2012 when he accepted a management trainee position withITCin Chennai during the campus placement. Many worked under him and that gave a strong start to his career. However, Vidit discovered during the following two years that this conventional industry was moving slowly and adopting technology slowly. Concurrently, his pals in Bengaluru were climbing ladders and were up-to-date with new technology. Concern about losing out pushed Vidit to get in touch with his friend, Sanjeev Barnwal atInMobiand he landed in Bengaluru. After briefly working in InMobi for around a year, they left their jobs to work for a bigger plan. Both of them worked out a plan to launch aneCommerce startupfor small businesses. They created an app called Fashnear, which connected the local vendors with their customers. But, since the idea did not hit great success due to a few challenges, they tweaked it a bit to launch Meesho in 2015. Meesho was launched in 2015 by the two IIT batchmates Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal, and the parent company is still being called Fashnear Technologies Pvt. Ltd. The company grew to be a groundbreaking eCommerce startup focused on empowering small businesse

Original source: StartupTalky