Meesho has unveiled its ‘Trust Assurance Report,’ underscoring its unwavering commitment to creating a secure and trustworthy platform for its customers. Meesho’s vision is to empower 100 million small businesses, revolutionizing internet commerce and supporting MSMEs in their online transition. Through ‘Project Suraksha,’ Meesho combats counterfeit and restricted products, achieving remarkable results – deactivating 42 lakh counterfeit listings and 10 lakh restricted products in just six months.
Meesho’s proactive approach to addressing the rising concern of counterfeit products is evident in its adoption of advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence and data science models. These cutting-edge tools enable Meesho to swiftly detect and flag suspicious listings and bad actor seller accounts, ensuring that only legitimate sellers operate on the platform. Remarkably, in 2023, Meesho’s systems successfully identified and blocked over 12,000 bad actor accounts from accessing the platform. The creation of the ‘Suraksha List,’ consisting of approximately 1,800 high-risk brands vulnerable to infringement and counterfeiting, reinforces Meesho’s commitment to maintaining a secure and trustworthy marketplace. As a result of these comprehensive efforts, non-compliant listings have seen an 80% reduction since February, now representing a mere 0.1% of platform views.
Meesho’s relentless pursuit of empowering small businesses and combating counterfeit products exemplifies its dedication to providing a safe and authentic e-commerce experience. The implementation of advanced technologies and the ‘Suraksha List’ underscores Meesho’s commitment to creating a reliable platform for both sellers and customers, solidifying its position as a leader in the Indian e-commerce landscape. Sanjeev Barnwal, Founder & CTO at Meesho says, “Our journey towards addressing counterfeits began in 2018 when our systems were simpler, relying more on manual checks and basic level text matching. In 2019, we formed our first dedicated AI team at Meesho, marking the beginning of our AI journey. Over the years, we have applied AI across the value chain to make ecommerce simpler and relevant to our customers and sellers.”
He further added, “AI has also played a crucial role in our fight against counterfeits. For example, text-based recognition and image OCR scans product images to extract text and brand logos for thorough checks. This helps us in identifying infringing and counterfeit products by investigating proof of authorizations and determining authenticity. Meesho, as a technology-driven platform, is dedicated to providing customers with a safe and trustworthy online shopping experience. Leveraging advanced techniques in computer vision and natural language understanding, we continuously fortify our quality checks and effectively identify counterfeit products & bad actor sellers. We also have a dedicated quality and compliance team that proactively cross verifies automated signals, enabling us to combat fraudulent practices and build trust with our users.”
Meesho’s technology-driven approach relies on various tools and techniques to combat counterfeit products and maintain a trustworthy marketplace:
Image OCR (Optical Character Recognition): Introduced in May 2023, this tool scans product images to extract text and brand logos for thorough checks. It aids in identifying infringing and counterfeit products by investigating proof of authorizations and determining authenticity.
Image Match: Launched at the beginning of this year, Image Match plays a pivotal role in tackling counterfeit products on the platform. The tool matches product images against curated images from brands and historical data from previous deactivations.
Logo Detection: Trained for leading brands present on the platform, the logo detection tool identifies whether a brand’s logo is legitimate or fraudulent. Product developers continually expand the list of brands the tool can identify and flag, ensuring customers receive authentic goods from beloved brands.
Fuzzy RegEx (Regular Expression) Matching: This tool broadens the search by matching existing text to alternative keyword matches. It effectively plugs loopholes and fixes gaps like special characters or deliberate misspellings of brand names.
Nearest Neighbour Search: Recently launched, this tool operates similarly to the ‘Image Match’ function. It identifies the closest match to a particular product/brand, mapping each brand to a cluster and vetting new listings against the original brand images.
Meesho’s pioneering use of advanced technologies showcases their relentless dedication to maintaining a secure and reliable platform for customers and empowering small businesses in the digital age. The platform’s continued efforts in leveraging technology for the benefit of its users exemplify its commitment to providing a safe and trustworthy online shopping experience.