Meesho shut its Superstore grocery bet in 90% of cities a year after launch

India's social-commerce unicorn turned B2C marketplace; Superstore was its online grocery vertical run through kirana pickup points.

That a kirana-pickup grocery vertical — Farmiso, then Superstore — could scale to 200 cities on a commission model despite India's thin grocery margins.

$570M raised in 2021 with the grocery expansion announced as a priority; $870M across 2021 at a $4.9B valuation

In late 2021, with its social-commerce core burdened by high marketing costs, influencer dependence and untrained resellers, Meesho decided to enter B2C e-commerce and piloted Farmiso, an online grocery vertical, in Karnataka. Founder Vidit Aatrey had raised $570M that year saying Farmiso would expand to 200 cities.

In the first week of April 2022 Meesho rebranded Farmiso as Meesho Superstore, pledging expansion to 12 states by year-end; it was then operating in six states — Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. The promised integration into the core app happened only in some pincodes. Soon after the rebrand, Meesho laid off about 150 Farmiso employees citing 'role redundancy'. The commission model leaned on heavy discounts to get grocery stores to act as pickup points, and supply chain and logistics were persistent problems.

By late August 2022, Superstore had shut operations in over 90% of its cities, leaving only Nagpur and Mysore; more than 300 on-roll and off-roll employees were terminated — some told on the spot — with two months' severance for on-roll staff and some absorbed into the core business.

The model needed heavy discounts just to onboard kirana pickup points, while structurally offering no home delivery — the convenience grocery customers expect.

Revenue stayed low while cash burn stayed high; insiders said 'there was no money coming in'.

Expansion outran operations: six states were opened 'without proper planning', with supply chain and logistics flagged as unsolved problems.

The April 2022 rebrand pledged 12 states and full app integration; by August the integration existed only in some pincodes and 150 Farmiso staff had already been cut for 'role redundancy'.

A pivot announced with city-count targets is a bet the unit economics have to survive: Superstore's onboarding discounts and logistics costs outran its commission revenue within a year.

As of August 25, 2022, Superstore survived only in Nagpur and Mysore with reduced teams, piloting home delivery in both — with sources saying those cities would close too if business did not improve. Founder Vidit Aatrey had publicly denied reports of a down round, but the company was still searching for funding amid an expected 18–24 month funding winter.