Meesho logo is seen in this illustration taken August 7, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
Jan 30 (Reuters) - Indian e-commerce firm Meesho's quarterly loss widened sharply in its first earnings report since its blockbuster market debut in December last year, as costs rose.
The firm's consolidated net loss widened 13-fold to 4.91 billion rupees ($53.44 million) for the quarter ended December 31, from a loss of 374.3 million rupees a year ago.
Meesho has carved out a niche for itself by offering low-priced products without charging sellers a commission, in a space that has majors such as Amazon.com and Walmart-owned Flipkart vying for customers in the world's most populous country.
The company, backed by Softbank and Peak XV Partners, has been on an expansion spree to onboard more users. Meesho's investment in advertising and sales promotion, as a share of its net merchandise value, nearly doubled to 2.4% in the reporting quarter from 1.3% last year.
NMV is a key metric for e-commerce platforms that measures the total checkout value of successfully delivered orders.
Overall expenses jumped 44% to 40.71 billion rupees, with advertising
Meesho also cited the accelerated scaling up of its newly acquired logistics platform Valmo as part of the reason for the jump in expenses, and said it was "expected to normalise in the coming quarters".
Revenue rose nearly 32% to 35.18 billion rupees as India's growing online consumer base looks for cheaper and more convenient ways to shop, fueled by tax cuts and festive-season demand.
Its annual transacting users jumped 34% to 251 million in the quarter and NMV climbed 26% to 109.95 billion rupees.
We expect adjusted core-earnings margin to improve in the next two quarters, driven by logistics cost recovery, operating leverage on user growth, and technology investments made during the year, the company said.
Meesho's stock closed nearly 3% higher ahead of the results and has risen 7% since its listing on December 10, 2025
($1 = 91.8770 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Komal Salecha in Bengaluru; Editing by Mrigank Dhaniwala and Janane Venkatraman)
