Industrybuying is an online B2B eCommerce platform that simplifies procurement process for enterprises and business customers. The company was founded by the duo of siblings Swati Gupta & Rahul Gupta in 2013 with an aim to eliminate the inefficiency, be it assortment, availability, pricing or delivery that a business customer face during procurement of industrial utility products.
The company offers over 1.5 million products across 45+ categories ranging from Safety and Security, Electrical and Lighting, Power and Solar, to MRO supplies and many more categories.
Based out of Delhi NCR, the company has a Pan-India footprint with fulfilment centres in Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad and Bangalore.
Sujata Sangwan Interacts With Swati Gupta, Co-founder & CEO, Industrybuying And Spoke To Her
how was Industrybuying started?Rahul and Swati had successful careers in US, but they returned to India when they spotted an opportunity in this billion dollar industry. They knew how the sector worked in past, but somehow felt that industrial and business procurement as a process is very tedious and highly inefficient due to multiple factors, be it assortment, availability, pricing or delivery. Earlier, businesses depended on the traditional/offline channels for contacting multiple vendors to source the item and fulfil their requirement which was a time consuming process. We analysed the western market model and thought of building a one-stop solution for all business needs which would do away with all such inefficiencies and that is when Industrybuying came into existence from an idea.
However, the concept originated from a major paradigm shift observed in the buying behavior of consumers, with the ever growing B2C e-tailing industry. Consumers shopping online started realizing the effortlessness and ease that could be induced in the business while purchasing goods for their businesses online. Such a B2B platform would save them a lot of time, effort and most importantly, capital. Countering this new-fangled need of buyers, Industrybuying fulfills these requirements by facilitating Bulk buying or One Order – Distributed Delivery. Overcoming the challenges of price discovery and sorting product ranges in Industrial goods, the company’s strategies are aligned towards the single goal of helping SMEs and businesses to procure goods in the best possible way.
Unique key feature/servicesWe are continuously adding features and improving our products to meet our customers’ requirements. On our product side, currently, we are available on web and mobile both the platform. To facilitate the hassle free transaction, we have integrated all the necessary wallet from Paytm, Mobikwik and PayU for payment. Besides Wallets, NetBanking, Debit/Card and Cash on Delivery Payment modes, we also allow our customers to pay through Cheque and NEFT.
We are offering a customised product solution called ProcMan that is especially designed for enterprise customers and an OCI (open catalogue interface) will be announced soon. As the buyer’s behaviour is different, we have announced a few services on our e-commerce platform such as bulk buying, inventory liquidation and etc. that brings similar offline buying experience.
How is it different from existing ones?With an emergence in the B2B eCommerce sector, there are a lot of niche players who joined later, but most of them are operating in a limited set of categories. As mentioned, we have a wide range of product assortments (around 15 lakhs products), operating in various sectors. More than 3500 brands are associated with us and selling their goods online. We deliver products across 21000 pin codes mostly in Tier 2 and tier 3 cities. We have partnered with a few OEM’s and the businesses can procure goods at the best price. Some of the international players like Grainger and Wuerth have also joined us to sell their products in India through our platform. We are also taking some of the offline features like bulk buying, inventory liquidation and implementing them online which sets us apart from the competitors.
Funding statusThe company was founded on a bootstrap model and continued on the same model until December 2014. With the growing business demand, we decided to raise the first round of funding and raised $2 million from SAIF partners in Series-A.
Most recently, we raised $9 million from Kalaari Capital, with participation from SAIF Partners and BEENEXT in series B round. Apart from these two rounds, Murgappa and TVS family had also joined in our growth story and invested an undisclosed amount last year. We also raised about $1.8 million from Trifecta as a debt fund to focus on our enterprise business.
So far, we have raised about $13 million from Indian and global investors, and are ready for Series C round that will be in the market in a few months.
Monetization modelWe are a managed marketplace with zero or just in time inventory. We procure and sell products to our customers at a selling price and generate revenue from the margin of about 12-15% that we charge per transaction.
Traction detailsAt present, we have more than 75000 businesses and 150 enterprise customers, 4500 registered sellers with an average transaction of Rs. 5000 on our e-commerce platform. More than 3500 brands are associated with us and over 15 lakh customers visit and explore our portal each month. In terms of revenue, we are growing 20-25% m-o-m and expecting to clock run rate of Rs. 300 crore by Q4’ 2016.
Future plansWe would like to establish Industrybuying as a one-stop B2B e-commerce platform among the businesses and enterprises for all kinds of industrial procurement.
Marketing plansWe are driving both online and offline marketing campaigns, participating in trade fair, exhibition and events and will continue to create the awareness among the peers and drive to sell growth in tier 2 and tier 3 cities.
Challenges facedInitially, we identified a few barriers in B2B e-commerce industry such as online buying adoption, trust building and supply chain. B2B customers have a different buying behaviour and we had to build a wide product assortment, trust, improve the supply chain, to provide reliable and quick procurement alternative.
Market size & opportunity The sector is entering in a transformative phase and more and more start-ups are emerging in this space attracting a lot of investors’ interest as well. The current market size of B2B eCommerce industry is around $350-400 billion and is expected to be a $700 billion industry. This is indeed larger than B2C eCommerce. The sector will flourish once the large enterprise will start procuring through an e-commerce platform.
Industrybuying is coming with a customised product solution that will revolutionise the industrial product procurement process. Especially in tier 2 and tier 3 cities, there will be lot many SME’s entering into the sector and contributing in country’s economy growth.
