Founded by Sanjiv Khandelwal and Mihir Shah,
XSTOK.com is an online B2B marketplace for surplus & Ex-stock across fabrics, home textiles, apparels and yarns. In India, the textile mills produce an average of $11 billion worth of surplus stock every year. Most of the extra stock of this nature is high quality product but due to various trade constraints is sold by the mills through local agents in an unorganized setup.
XSTOK enables the textile mills to upload details of their surplus stock on the XSTOK online platform, which can then be accessed by the registered buyers & sellers. XSTOK aims at creating ‘more choices, better prices’ for both buyers and sellers.
Sujata Sangwan Interacts With XSTOK’s Team And Spoke To Them
How was XSTOK.com started? Sanjiv has more than decades of experience with textiles, ecommerce and building trading platforms for B2B businesses. Mihir was working as Director –Tech, Media and Telecom Investment Banking at Bank of America Merrill Lynch based out of London and New York. He came back to India in mid 2014. Both Sanjiv and Mihir were keen on using technology for improving existing distribution networks in India. They were aware of the inefficiencies in the Indian textile surplus sector and started XSTOK.com with the aim of redefining the way surplus produce was treated by both mill owners and the customers.
The two promoters launched XSTOK.com in January 2015 with their personal savings. The platform, a web and smartphone based app, was officially launched to the public in June 2015. It has raised an initial round of angel investor funding in September 2015 from an elite group of professionals heading consulting, stock broking and logistics companies such as Jeetu Panjabi (ex-Capital Group) Manish Chokshi (Asian Paints), Anupam Mittal (People Group) Vineet Suchanti (Keynote Capital) and Oliphans Capital.
Unique key feature/servicesXSTOK.com is focused on bringing in market efficiencies to the distribution network in the commodity market. Their first offering is for the textile surplus market, however the model will and can be extended to multiple industries like paper, chemicals etc.
Currently the textile mills produce extra stock ( i.e. quantity that is 10-15% more than the regular orders) to manage any contingencies for their forward contracts or pre-sold quantities. This extra or surplus stock is of high quality and almost readily available for sale. However, it is a challenge for the mills to market these smaller quantities and hence the sale of surplus products is limited to local buyers and regional markets.
XSTOK.com brings together these sellers and the buyers to a digital marketplace replacing the local and traditional “mandis”. The platform provides a democratic avenue, where the sales mechanism is based on dynamic pricing, guaranteeing transparency and a full service promise.
Unlike any other B2B marketplace platform, at XSTOK.com a buyer can search for products, view real-time inventory, buy a product or products and use a secure payment gateway to complete the transaction. It also expands the markets for sellers and gives them more information about the end buyer and theirneeds.
How is it different from existing ones?While there are B2B sites, there is no one focused on the $11 billion p.a textile surplus stock segment. The innate understanding of the textile industry and the experience in the B2B industry guided the promoters and enabled them to create an easy to use mobile first app which helps both the seller and the buyer complete the buy and sales process seamlessly.
Monetization modelXSTOK.com charges the seller listing fees and some fees for the sales through the site. There is no charge applicable for buyers. XSTOK.com has conducted over 500 auctions in less than a year. In essence XSTOK.com is a transparent transaction fee based platform.
Traction detailsXSTOK.com currently has over 400 registered sellers and over 9000 registered buyers across India in less than 12 months of operation. Arvind, Bombay Dyeing, Nahar,Trident , D'Decor , Grasim, Welspun, Syntex are some of the sellers of surplus stock on the platform.
Future plansXSTOK aims to break-even by the end of the current financial year. It also aims to end this fiscal year with a base of 30,000 buyers and 500 sellers.
Marketing plansThe company uses Google, Facebook, social media, direct mailing, online advertising in addition to conducting textile weeks in major metros and key markets in smaller Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities.
Challenges faced, market size & opportunity The textile industry is very ancient and exists since the Harappan times. It's a very traditional industry and getting sellers/buyers to change existing behaviour and move to buying and selling online is certainly a challenge.
XSTOK.com in its initial study of the market realized that the traders were using their smartphones more extensively than laptops and computers. Hence, from the very beginning XSTOK.com was focused on making its app user friendly.
While it has received a very good response from the early adopters, for others, it has launched on-ground events such as ‘textile weeks’, ‘traders meets ‘ and road shows to hand hold and help buyers to use the site and complete their transaction.
The market size for extra textiles/ surplus textiles is $11 billion p.a in India and XSTOK.com is the only online B2B marketplace platform for this very vibrant and full of opportunity market.
