Tradexs: An Efficient B2B Platform to Trade Excess Inventory

Tradexs is an efficient B2B marketplace to trade excess inventory in a transparent, organized and more profitable way. The startup facilitates interaction between sellers and buyers to trade in such excess inventory in a mutually beneficial way. This being an online technology platform, a seller can reach out to many more prospective buyers. From a buyer's perspective, he has a number of options to source his inventory at a competitive rate and also with significantly reduced procurement time. Tradexs has identified a very specific problem faced by industries world over and also have a robust technology platform to solve this problem.

The idea of Tradexs was conceived in 2015 and the company was formed in October 2015 under the name Inventryx Systems Pvt. Ltd.

Tradexs has been started by 3 experienced entrepreneurs. Their profiles and details are mentioned below.

Milind Joshi: Milind has been a veteran in industry with over 30 years of work experience. He has worked with TCS, Persistent systems and has executed his own startups in past. He has been mentoring startups since over a decade in Pune and consulting various manufacturing companies on technology systems and business strategy. He is an IIT Bombay alumnus and has also chaired IT panel with CII Pune. Milind is the CEO at Tradexs.

Pradeep Beri: Pradeep has been a serial entrepreneur with over 20 years of work experience. He currently runs a Brand Management company and helps his clients (mostly SMEs) with their marketing initiatives. He is a MICA alumnus and actively contributes to entrepreneurial ecosystem in his community.

Rohit Lalwani: Rohit is a parallel entrepreneur and entrepreneurship coach. He has developed a course in entrepreneurship and teaches the same at premier engineering/management Schools - CIIE IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Indore, IIT Mumbai & Kharagpur etc. He comes with a wide corporate experience (Asian Paints), running family business (Wonder Bath) and start-up companies (TalentBridge Technologies & Sparkpluggers Innovation Lab) spanning over a decade.

Sujata Sangwan Interacts With Rohit Lalwani, Co-founder, Tradexs and Spoke To Him

Tell us more about your industry, competition

Currently the customers largely solve this problem using unorganized methods like agents, scrap vendors, auctioneers services, through personal references (word of mouth) and newspaper advertisements. However these methods are either expensive, time consuming, provide low economic value, demands large volumes or value for liquidation and has limited reach and shelf life. Since Tradexs is state-of-the-art online technology platform, its services are efficient and easy to use as compared to the existing solution. Tradexs is a systematic approach, transparent, has better reach & retention and is mutually beneficial to buyer and seller. Few online direct competitions of Tradexs include Xstok.com, Nonmovinginventory.com and Factorysurplus.in

The indirect competitors of Tradexs, comprise of eCommerce companies which trade in industrial products on their platform. However non-exclusivity for B2B products, sale of new packed products at current expensive market prices and higher lead time to procure the product are the reasons which give Tradexs an edge over its indirect competitors.

How is your business model different from the existing ones?

Tradexs plans to build an entire ecosystem around excess inventory which will help the sellers and buyers to trade efficiently, faster and profitably. Tradexs is different in its business model approach where it will ensure liquidation of excess inventory by constantly searching for potential buyers. On the technology front Tradexs has developed a simple and easy to use model which can be scaled up faster. The intelligence planned and built in platform will help identify potential buyers faster and reduce the trade cycle period.

Who are your clients? How do you look at expanding?

Currently Tradexs is focusing on manufacturing domain in Pune. The early adopters comprise of auto, auto components, heavy engineering and electrical manufacturers. Tradexs aspires to expand within all verticals of industries in Pune and further launch in other cities near Pune. Tradexs marketing team is developing and launching programs likes Sales Associates Program, partnering with various trade associations etc. to expand faster.

The best and worst memories while setting up

The best moment came when one of our fiends wholeheartedly decided to help us financially just after meeting us and listening to us once. We hope that we won’t have worst moment that we could describe!

Your Marketing Plans so that world know you

Tradexs plans to partner with various trade associations, participate in trade exhibitions and launch a Sales Associates Program. Apart from these Tradexs also plans to use technology mediums like digital marketing, instant updates to interact and provide prompt services to the customers.

What are your plans for funding?

Tradexs is a bootstrapped company and supported by friends and network financially. Tradexs is interacting with various investors to raise investments in the coming weeks which will help them achieve their goals faster.

How do you monetize?

Tradexs will earn revenues from charging transaction fees to the buyers on success of transactions and listing fees to the sellers. The other revenue streams include value added services, advertising fee, data monetization and premium listing. Value added services will comprise of material testing or certification, transportation, insurance etc. that will be sought by buyers prior to any transaction. Tradexs will outsource these activities to third party vendors and experts on their behalf.

What is the next big thing in pipeline?

Tradexs has a roadmap for next 18 months which includes trading of excess inventory, excess capacity and sale of entire plants. It also aspires to empanel 250 marquee customers each with excess inventory listing of over Rs. 1 crore each.

What is the addressable market and underlying opportunity you are going after?

Tradexs has an opportunity to cater across market categories, be it manufacturing, agriculture or services sector. Tradexs customers will keep interchanging their role of buyer and sellers. Both these elements, increase the potential of this idea. Tradexs initially plans to provide solution to the manufacturing sector, since they are simpler to address and face this problem in abundance. According to our educated guesstimate, manufacturing companies big and small, at any point carry excess inventory of 4-6% of their turn-over. As a routine practice, periodically they have to clean their balance sheets and also clear their valuable storage space by selling the excess inventory items.

According to Ministry of MSME there are 36 million SMEs in India. Most of them are buyers and sellers of various industrial goods, which contributes to the growth of B2B commerce. According to a consultant firm Ecumen, B2B segment in India is set to grow by 2.5 times to touch Rs 45 lakh crore by 2020.