The time will never be better than now for the business-to-business (B2B) online space to flourish with the market estimating the B2B online commerce space to grow 2.5 times by 2020 worth around $700-$750 million. It is also expected to overtake the business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce business eventually.
The pace at which internet and smart phones have penetrated into the remotest corners of the country along with the recently formulated ‘Digital India’ campaign further boosting the trend, the small and medium enterprise sellers are opened to a whole new world of possibilities, said Swati Gupta, Co-founder and CEO, Industrybuying.com.
With the aim of reaching the seller clusters directly and get them on-board, Industrybuying.com launched their on-ground brand activation campaign earlier this month. It provided the sellers to interact directly with the category experts from Industrybuying.com and get a better understanding of the benefits of selling on the online platform.
“The crux is not that they are skeptical towards welcoming this sector, but the proper knowledge about this space that they lack. Our brand activation campaign was mainly aimed at clearing their apprehensions about the e-commerce domain. We tried to educate them about the benefits of going online and how they can leverage through selling products online,” said Gupta.
She added, “After Delhi, we have plans to take this campaign across Pune, Mumbai, Bangalore, Ahmadabad and mainly to the Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns because half of our transactions come from there.”
Industrybuying plans to partner with sellers across the country to sell on its platform and provide them an easy and seamless access to reach potential customers all over India, especially in tier two and tier three towns.
An online marketplace for selling aggregators mainly to small, medium and large enterprises, Industrybuying has other competitors like Tolex and Power2SME. But Gupta says, what sets them apart is the variety of products Industrybuying offer across many categories.
“Most other players are operating in a limited number of categories. We offer much more in variety and hard core industry products like pumps, motors, hammers, pullers, plumbing tools, power saws, drills, finishing tools and pipes among others,” she said.
Currently Industrybuying has an online catalogue of 300,000+ products available to buy online, used in manufacturing, construction, maintenance, services and commercial operations. It counts among its customers leading FMCG, hospitality, manufacturing, construction companies, many large and small auto ancillaries, pharma manufacturers, services and hospitality companies, maintenance companies.
She added, “Our monetization model is mainly the difference between the selling price and the cost price at what we procure the product.”
Industrybuying has earlier received a funding of $2 million from SAIF partners and their most recent funding was of Rs 60 crores from Kalaari Capital in series B round, which has used in expansion by establishing fulfillment centers in various cities.
With around 500 transactions a day, Industrybuying currently has over 3500 sellers across the platform with 50,000+ B2B customers and 1 million+ stock keeping units.
