Festive season sees Meesho green light its yearly mega sale

The Platform’s senior director of growth sifts the challenges and opportunities of a festive sale for e-commerce platforms.

As the festive season grips the country, e-commerce platforms are ushering in the celebrations with a plethora of discounts and sales, bringing joy to millions of shoppers and sellers. With the aroma of festivities in the air, online retailers are leaving no stone unturned to rope in customers left, right and centre.

Meesho, an e-commerce platform, is all geared up to take up the festive mantle, with its signature ‘Mega Blockbuster Sale’, which goes live on October 6. What stands out for the platform is its already low price points, which are hard to put a discount on. 

The brand’s senior director of growth, Nilesh Gupta, points out that the platform avoids putting absurd discounts on its products in festive sales, because consumers are capable of dissecting promotional gimmicks and authentic discounts. 

He says, “Consumers have become very savvy, and they can establish a fair price for a product. So, sometimes people may feel that the prices are sometimes jacked up for the sake of it, and then a  very big discount is put on it. Meesho as a platform never does this. You’ll never see an 80 percent discount on the platform. Perhaps in the range of 15, 20, or even 30 percent.”

However, the platform will put 90 to 95 percent of its products on discount in this sale. With everyone looking forward to festive sales from e-commerce platforms, Gupta opines that for Meesho, the season holds strong prominence to further reinforce its value proposition.

Gupta says, “I think it's the most exciting part of the year for any e-commerce company. You should see the buzz in the office. One of the things that comes across very clearly is that in the festive season, people are okay to loosen their purse strings and actually go and shop for themselves and the entire family. There's that one time when everybody irrespective of gender orientation, city, or income, is shopping for themselves.”

Meesho has also unveiled a campaign featuring celebrities Kapil Sharma and Pooja Hegde, to build awareness about the sale. The narrative-driven initiative aims to recalibrate consumer perspectives on online shopping by spotlighting Meesho’s competitive pricing structure.

It unfolds through a visual tale where actress Pooja Hegde immerses herself in the realm of online retail. While perusing an e-commerce application, the notable personality of Kapil Sharma materialises from her phone screen, advocating the exploration of Meesho’s offerings.

The campaign has been conceptualised and created by Moonshot, the agency behind the platform’s previous campaign featuring Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh. Speaking on the genesis of the campaign, Gupta reveals, “We partnered with Moonshot, who had a very fun and quirky way in which they brought about this particular user behaviour of checking prices on different apps, and then realizing that Meesho truly has the best price without artificially bulking up discount. So you will see that I think coming across with our fantastic partners in Kapil Sharma and Pooja Hegde.”

The platform recently underwent a rebranding exercise, unveiling a new look and a solidified brand proposition. As per Gupta, rebranding was in the cards, and pending for quite some time, owing to the brand’s trajectory over the past few years.

He says, “Over the last six, seven years, we've evolved substantially. We are a truly horizontal e-commerce platform with a very diverse set of collections for everyone, and our identity doesn't reflect it. So we wanted to bring out an inclusive growth aspect, in a very exciting way. We worked on this identity and launched it in July and it's been fantastic. It's seen great returns in terms of recall.”

In terms of business and sales, the platform is seeing uniform growth in most regions of the country, as per Gupta. However, there are certain pockets where the platform aims to expand its presence. He says, “Over the last two or three years, our growth has been so uniform that most regions have shown progress. But, we are also reflecting deep in our data and trying to find if there are pockets that may not have grown as much. It can be in terms of cities, for example, Metro tier-1 and tier-2 cities. It can even be regions such as Punjab, Rajasthan, and Gujarat, where we have seen growth, but probably not to our full potential.”

In terms of user demographics, the platform is aiming to unlock more value and use cases for men.

Meesho, since its inception, has put a lot of emphasis on its ability to provide best price points on its products. This, for an e-commerce platform, is a fairly solid proposition, given the competitive landscape of online shopping. But, how has the price proposition faired for the brand over the years?

Gupta answers, “I don't think we are a platform that only sells low-price products, what we stand for is the best price. So, tomorrow if you want to buy 4000 Repeat designers looking Sari with a lot of heavy work, you’ll find it for the best price on Meesho.”