On a humid June afternoon in 2017, Elevation Capital’s Mukul Arora sat across from Vidit Aatrey at a cafe in Bengaluru, the kind of place where startups are usually born. The two had been talking for nearly a year and a half, but that was the day Elevation decided to back Aatrey’s startup Meesho (which stands for meri [my] shop). At the time, neither of them perhaps knew the impact their meeting would have on the ecommerce industry and on their own fortunes.
Eight years and one business pivot later, Meesho went public in a blockbuster IPO in December, generating the kind of wealth that is the stuff of venture capital (VC) dreams.
Elevation’s early cheque compounded into roughly a 36-times return, while Peak XV Partners, another early backer, earned about 26 times its investment. Meesho’s co-founders, of course, did even better: Aatrey’s minor stake sale earned him an estimated 1,850-times multiple, while Sanjeev Barnwal saw a return close to 5,500 times, according to media reports. As the stock surged after the listing on December 10, Aatrey’s 10 percent stake in the company made him the country’s newest billionaire.
So, what distinguishes Meesho from the graveyard of failed Indian startups? It’s not timing, because Meesho was considered a late entrant in ecommerce in 2015. It’s also not luck, according to Mohit Bhatnagar, managing director at Peak XV Partners. It’s an execution operating system built around what the company calls “pods”, small teams of five to six people, each accountable for one measurable outcome. Each pod contains everything it needs: A product manager, engineers, a designer, an analyst and a business owner, all evaluated on the same key result. When a pod looks after, say, seller onboarding, the team sits together and works problems out in real time rather than passing requirements between departments. It’s what Aatrey calls a decentralised “startups within the startup” model.
Consider Valmo, Meesho’s logistics platform which handled 764 million orders in fiscal 2025. Most companies trying to build something of this scale would have assembled a massive team and layered hierarchies. Meesho created small cross-functional pods that stitched together India’s existing logistics capacity. The project began as an experiment and graduated to a serious level when it consistently outperformed external logistics partners. Now seen as Meesho’s competitive moat, Valmo was created not through empire-building, but by scaling fast with discipline.
Also listen: Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal, co-founders at Meesho, on the work ahead and paying it forward
This organisational philosophy reflects something deeper about Aatrey’s approach: Discipline creates freedom. When the rules are transparent and measurement replaces micromanagement, hundreds of small teams can act like founders while staying aligned to company goals.
The result is a company serving over 200 million customers across India, an execution machine powering a social commerce platform.
Founder profiles tend to hunt for the pivotal moment, that one decision that changed the company’s fate. In Aatrey’s case, that decision would be to let others decide.
First Published: Jan 06, 2026, 12:25
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