The challenge

Meesho has grown fast, with over 100 million app downloads and millions of active users every month. But the platform’s rapid success came with significant technical challenges. High-traffic sales events often pushed the platform’s backend to its limit, leading to system failures that hurt both the user experience and customer trust.  For many users, Meesho is also their first experience with e-commerce, making a smooth, reliable platform critical for building loyalty.

During a major sales event, Meesho’s ElastiCache cluster hit its shard limit, putting revenue at risk during a critical period. It was a tipping point—the app’s demand had outpaced its infrastructure, pushing its limits to the breaking point. To fix the issue fast, Meesho’s engineering team migrated workloads to Redis, stabilizing the system and keeping the event on track without disruption.

Switching to Redis not only resolved Meesho’s in-the-moment crisis, but it set the stage for a longer-term technical transformation. To sustain its rapid growth and handle future user demands with confidence, Meesho began a full migration to Redis.

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Redis is key to building a tech stack that not only handles scale but does so with unparalleled efficiency and reliability.”

Handling massive traffic fluctuations with sub-millisecond latency

Meesho needed a way to handle massive data volumes with ultra-low latency.  They integrated Redis into their Google Cloud setup through the Google Cloud Marketplace.Now, Redis powers Meesho’s entire layered architecture—including core, gateway, observability, infrastructure, and utility layers—improving performance and reliability.

Redis also drives dynamic gamification and customizable live e-commerce features. Sub-millisecond latency and real-time personalization keep users engaged, even during high-stakes events that are on par with Black Friday in terms of consumer interest and purchasing power.

“Our goal is to create a seamless shopping experience that keeps users happy and encourages them to place any order more easily,” says Kiran Katreddi, Meesho’s VP of Platform Engineering. “Building upon a trustworthy architecture in Redis makes that happen.”

By transitioning the app’s workloads to Redis, Meesho can handle traffic and usage spikes, keeping performance stable and responsive. “Redis didn’t just come to our rescue in one bad moment,” says Katreddi. “Instead, it became the key driver of our platform success, initiating the start of a trusted partnership.”

Spin the wheel: Processing 100 million clicks in real time

As a shopping platform, Meesho hosts two types of sales: Regular monthly promotions and a major annual sale just before Diwali. For each sale, Meesho uses Redis to manage high-volume visitor and shopping data with maximum flexibility and fast load times.

A perfect example of Meesho’s innovation is a “Spin the Wheel” game, which was built in only two days before an annual sales event. This marketing strategy, aimed at engaging daily active users with prizes like cars and bikes, involved complex probability calculations. Within the app, the game had to process an exceptionally high click volume per second from all over India.

Redis made it possible for Meesho to scale fast and handle 100 million clicks at once. The result was a smooth, engaging shopping experience that boosted sales and spurred more app downloads.

Real-time messaging at a fraction of the cost

Meesho’s custom live commerce solution, powered by Redis, transforms how suppliers connect with users during live chat sessions. Using Redis as an adapter for socket.io, the platform broadcasts messages to thousands of users in real time. When a message is published in a chat, Redis distributes it across all servers, identifying users and delivering relevant messages instantly. This real-time capability guarantees smooth and reliable communication, even during peak traffic.

Redis brings advanced features like automatic failover and data storage, keeping live interactions smooth. Additionally, in-memory data makes operations more efficient and helps personalize the experience for millions of users in real time. This solution is more reliable, costs less, and has cut Meesho’s monthly expenses from $5,000 to under $500.

Powering seamless, scalable shopping for millions of customers

For Meesho, “innovation under pressure” isn’t just a motto—it’s at the heart of the company’s culture, and Redis has become central to fulfilling that mission. “Having Redis not only improves our scalability, but it does so with unprecedented efficiency, speed, and reliability,” says Katreddi.

Meesho can now handle millions of simultaneous users during high-traffic events, delivering uninterrupted performance and a seamless shopping experience. “Redis provides us with the flexibility to adapt to massive fluctuations in traffic,” says Kattredi. “We’re talking about a tech stack that can effortlessly manage a 20x load difference within a single day. And during major sales events, we see a staggering 10x load increase.”

Redis powers real-time gamification and live commerce features—bringing TV-style home shopping to an app that’s now part of daily life in India—boosting sales and customer engagement. Our platform has also led to substantial cost savings, allowing Meesho to cut server costs by 65% in two years and lower monthly operational expenses by 90%.

Redis’ scalable, cost-efficient infrastructure has supported Meesho’s explosive growth, delivered consistent stability during peak demand, and opened the door to new levels of innovation. “From managing massive fluctuations in traffic to delivering real-time personalization to our users, Redis has been a cornerstone of our innovation strategy,” says Katreddi.