Meesho Launches AI Voice Bot For Post-Order Queries

SoftBank-backed Meesho has rolled out a generative AI-powered voice bot to enhance customer support. The company claimed that this is a first-of-its-kind initiative by any ecommerce firm in India.

Meesho, which claims to cater to 160 Mn customers in India, said the bot can recognise emotions, do human-like interactions and understand language transitions.

Launched about a month ago, the bot has helped the company slash per-customer call costs by 75%, said Sanjeev Barnwal, cofounder and CTO of Meesho. 

Currently, the bot addresses about 60,000 post-order queries per day, which is less than half of the overall calls that Meesho receives on a daily basis. The company is planning to scale the bot to handle all post-order queries in future. This would help it reduce overall expenses by 15-20%, Barnwal said.

While the voice bot is currently available in two languages, Hindi and English, the company plans to expand support for additional Indian languages in coming months.

When asked if automation would result in any layoffs, the company said employees in the customer executive team would not be impacted, as Meesho is upskilling them to handle more complex calls.

Founded in 2015 by Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal, Meesho started as a social ecommerce startup. However in 2022, the company transitioned to a marketplace model to take on heavyweights like Flipkart and Amazon.

While Flipkart and Amazon are more popular in Tier-I cities, Meesho has Tier-II & III cities as its moat. The company earns more than 80% of its revenue from these cities. 

Meesho does not charge commission fees on its platform and instead relies on advertising and marketing income from sellers. 

The company trimmed its net loss by 81.8% to INR 304.9 Cr in the financial year 2023-24 (FY24) from INR 1,675 Cr in the previous year on the back of improvement in margins. Operating revenue zoomed 32.8% to INR 7,614.9 Cr during the year under review from INR 5,734.5 Cr in FY23. 

Meesho saw a string of top level exits this year, with its CXO of monetisation Harsh Chaudhary quitting in March after a two-year stint. 

Earlier this month, Meesho came under fire from internet users for allegedly “glorifying” criminal figures as t-shirts with images of gangster Lawrence Bishnoi were listed on the platform. Following the backlash, the company removed the t-shirts from the platform.

Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.