Meesho is quietly building one of India’s most ambitious AI driven e-commerce models, with the SoftBank backed company using artificial intelligence across customer acquisition, shopping discovery, logistics and advertising to tap the next wave of digital consumers from Bharat.
During the company’s Q4 FY26 analyst call, Meesho management repeatedly highlighted how AI is becoming central to its business strategy as it targets deeper penetration in smaller towns and rural India.
A key pillar of this push is “Vaani”, Meesho’s voice AI shopping assistant, designed specifically for users who may not be comfortable with text based online shopping. The company said the tool is helping reduce friction for first time internet users and driving stronger conversion in rural markets.
“We saw that with Vaani, we were able to convert more rural customers on our platform, and because of that our CAC went down,” Vidit Aatrey, CMD and CEO, Meesho told analysts.
The company plans to double down on rural customer acquisition over the next year as AI lowers onboarding barriers for new users. Meesho believes India still remains significantly under penetrated in e-commerce, with only around 30% of smartphone users transacting online compared to over 80% in many emerging markets.
Beyond voice commerce, Meesho is also relying heavily on AI driven recommendation algorithms to improve shopping behaviour and increase repeat purchases. According to the company, first year customer frequency has nearly doubled over the last three years due to improvements in pricing, assortment and intelligent recommendation systems.
“With the improvements and products that we have made through AI and otherwise, that barrier threshold has come down,” Aatrey said while explaining how Meesho is simplifying the journey from app installation to first purchase.
AI is also helping Meesho improve operational efficiency behind the scenes. The company said smarter logistics algorithms are reducing delivery failures and lowering fulfillment costs. Better geographical mapping systems and AI based partner allocation tools have helped reduce misrouted shipments and improve delivery success rates.
At the same time, Meesho is experimenting with automation across sorting centres under its logistics platform Valmo.
“Our goal is in the next few years to basically bring state of the art automation within all our sort centres,” Aatrey said.
The company’s advertising business is also benefiting from AI. Meesho said its ad platform delivers among the highest return on ad spend metrics in the industry, encouraging more sellers to spend on promotions.
As competition intensifies in India’s e-commerce market, Meesho’s AI strategy appears focused on one core ambition: making online shopping simpler, cheaper and more accessible for the next 500 million users coming online from Bharat.
