Meesho, the ecommerce platform, has appointed Surojit Chatterjee as an independent director to its board.
Moneycontrol was the first to report this development.
This development comes close on the heels of reports suggesting that Meesho is looking to increase the size of its upcoming funding round to $500-$650 million from $300 million earlier. Last week, the company closed a $275 million funding round through a mix of primary and secondary share sales.
Continue Exploring: Meesho secures $275 Million in first tranche of larger funding round
Meesho has refrained from commenting on questions regarding the appointment.
Chatterjee held the position of Chief Product Officer (CPO) at cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase for three years, spanning from 2020 to 2023.
Before that, he served as the Senior Vice President and Head of Product at Flipkart from 2015 to 2017.
Additionally, Chatterjee has held significant roles at Google, Oracle, and IBM Corporation. Furthermore, he is spearheading the development of his own AI generative company, Ema Unlimited, based in San Francisco.
According to his LinkedIn profile, he has made investments in companies such as Udemy, Palantir Technologies, TrueLayer, Remote, AlphaFlow, Skillshare, Roverlabs, Activity Hero, and BloomReach.
Chatterjee is one of two independent directors at Meesho, with the other being Rohit Bhagat, who presently serves as the non-executive chairman of PhonePe.
Bhagat joined Meesho as its first independent director in June 2023. Prior to this, he served as an independent director at Flipkart, Axis Bank, Freecharge, and several other entities.
Currently, Meesho’s board consists of a total of eight members. This includes the company’s cofounders Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal, along with primary investors Mukul Arora from Elevation Capital, Ashutosh Sharma from Prosus, Mohit Bhatnagar from Peak XV Partners, and Sarthak Misra from SoftBank, as well as six other board members.
Continue Exploring: Meesho to upsize next funding round to $500-$650 Million
It’s worth mentioning that both Chatterjee and Bhagat have prior experience working with Meesho’s competitor, Flipkart.
At present, Flipkart holds the leading position in the ecommerce marketplace, followed by Amazon and Meesho.
Established in 2015 by Aatrey and Barnwal, Meesho boasts a network of over 1.5 million sellers on its ecommerce platform from all over India, serving more than 140 million annual transacting users. To date, it has secured funding exceeding $1.08 billion.
The startup’s investors include Facebook, Prosus, Elevation Capital, DST Partners, and Facebook.
In the meantime, Meesho is actively involved in talks regarding a potential reverse flip of its US parent company, a step associated with its intentions for an IPO in India. However, the company’s plans have not been finalized yet.
Additionally, fintech firm Groww has completed the process of moving its domicile back to India as of March 2024. This makes Groww the second major startup, following PhonePe, to shift domicile to India.
Several other Indian startups, such as Zepto, RazorPay, and Pine Labs, are also considering reverse flipping.
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