From $5Bn to $3.9Bn: Meesho's valuation reset reiterates public market realities for Indian tech IPOs

Early last year, news surfaced that Meesho was raising a large, fresh funding round. This development sparked excitement across India’s startup ecosystem—currently the third-largest in the world—and with good reason. Two major investors, SoftBank and Tiger Global, were reportedly considering investing in the social commerce and e-commerce platform after having pulled back from the Indian market. 

While SoftBank had previously invested in Meesho, this deal marked its first investment in India since April 2022. Tiger Global, on the other hand, which had made only a handful of small investments through 2022 and 2023, had largely stepped back from funding late-stage Indian startups due to inflated valuations—ironically, a trend it had heavily contributed to during the funding frenzy of 2021.

The prospect of both Tiger Global and SoftBank making significant investments was a welcome boost for the country's startup landscape, which had been starved of big-ticket funding. Late-stage funding had plummeted to a seven-year low of $12 billion in 2023, making this potential capital injection a hopeful sign for recovery.