ET BureauBENGALURU: After he moved to India from Singapore early last year, Rahul Garg saw that sourcing and procurement transactions between businesses largely remained offline while ecommerce was transforming buying patterns of individuals.
The former head of Google’s AdX platform for India, South East Asia and Korea conceptualized Moglix as an online marketplace for selling industrial goods and tools such as fasteners and light fittings to large and small businesses.
“We currently have 21 super categories and deal mostly in finished components. We have both self-service customers who source for their services or business as well as enterprises ordering through Moglix,” Garg said.
Some of the buyers on the platform include Indian Oil and Jindal Steel and a number of smaller businesses. “More than 50% of our orders come from companies with an annual turnover of more than Rs 100 crore,” Garg said.
Moglix, which has about 1,000 sellers on its marketplace, raised seed funding of Rs 10 crore from Accel Partners and Jungle Ventures in October and marquee investor Ratan Tata put in an undisclosed sum in February.
“B2B (business-to-business) commerce in India is a large opportunity though lot more complex than B2C (business-to-consumer), both in terms of customer reach and supplier/category aggregation,” said Subrata Mitra, partner at Accel Partners. “Moglix is attempting a novel approach to solving the problem in a manner that requires deep technology and marketing expertise.”
Moglix, which handles logistics for its sellers, plans to extend its warehouse network. “Currently, we have two locations in the country and plan to extend this to six locations by the next quarter (July-September) for faster deliveries,” Garg said.
Moglix, which said its revenue has grown 40% month-on-month since January, competes with Tolexo, which counts IndiaMart as an investor, and Kalaari Capital-backed IndustryBuying. Power2SME, which is backed by Infosys cofounder Nandan Nilekani, deals only in raw materials.
While credit-lines are important in B2B sourcing and procurement, Moglix presently does not extend credit to buyers. “We are working with our larger customers to see how best we can extend credit for the buying cycle,” Garg said.
The former head of Google’s AdX platform for India, South East Asia and Korea conceptualized Moglix as an online marketplace for selling industrial goods and tools such as fasteners and light fittings to large and small businesses.
“We currently have 21 super categories and deal mostly in finished components. We have both self-service customers who source for their services or business as well as enterprises ordering through Moglix,” Garg said.
Some of the buyers on the platform include Indian Oil and Jindal Steel and a number of smaller businesses. “More than 50% of our orders come from companies with an annual turnover of more than Rs 100 crore,” Garg said.
Moglix, which has about 1,000 sellers on its marketplace, raised seed funding of Rs 10 crore from Accel Partners and Jungle Ventures in October and marquee investor Ratan Tata put in an undisclosed sum in February.
“B2B (business-to-business) commerce in India is a large opportunity though lot more complex than B2C (business-to-consumer), both in terms of customer reach and supplier/category aggregation,” said Subrata Mitra, partner at Accel Partners. “Moglix is attempting a novel approach to solving the problem in a manner that requires deep technology and marketing expertise.”
Moglix, which handles logistics for its sellers, plans to extend its warehouse network. “Currently, we have two locations in the country and plan to extend this to six locations by the next quarter (July-September) for faster deliveries,” Garg said.
Moglix, which said its revenue has grown 40% month-on-month since January, competes with Tolexo, which counts IndiaMart as an investor, and Kalaari Capital-backed IndustryBuying. Power2SME, which is backed by Infosys cofounder Nandan Nilekani, deals only in raw materials.
While credit-lines are important in B2B sourcing and procurement, Moglix presently does not extend credit to buyers. “We are working with our larger customers to see how best we can extend credit for the buying cycle,” Garg said.
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