India, March 29 -- Somewhere in the bustling market of a tier II town, a woman walks into a fabric store.

She points to a kurta and says, "Bhaiya, ye dikhao. is colour ka, is range mein" (Show me this article, in this colour and in this price range). No search bar. No filters. No English. Just a plain and simple conversation, followed by a smile and a nod, and three options on the counter.

This is the template that Meesho wants to bring to your phone screen - conversational, vernacular and entirely natural. 

Earlier this week, the Bengaluru-based horizontal ecommerce giant launched Vaani, billing it as India's first GenAI-powered conversational voice shopping assistant. 

Unlike Amazon's Rufus and Flipkart's Flippi voice AI a...