Brand | IndiaMART – The Indian B2B Solution To Sell Easy

IndiaMART InterMESH Ltd. is one of India’s largest online B2B listing platforms for small and medium businesses, connecting buyers with suppliers. It also provides B2C and C2C sales service via its web portal. With 60% market share of the online B2B Classified space in India, the channel focuses on providing a platform to Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs), Large Enterprises as well as individuals. Founded in 1999, the company’s mission is ‘to make doing business easy’

The company was founded by Dinesh Sharma in 1996, a former senior system analyst at HCL Technologies in the USA. He bought a domain name indiamart.com for $135 in 1996 with an idea to build an online directory of merchants who wanted to sell their products abroad.

It currently has 102 Million+ buyers and 6 Million+ Suppliers with over 67 Million+ Products & Services. IndiaMART has 3,373 employees located across 85 offices in the country.

It recently launched a campaign with IndiaMART’s brand promise- ‘Bada Aasaan Hai’ – in which the brand strives to bring ease in doing business and to show how easily the offline businesses can scale themselves using an easy to use online platform.

Following are the offerings that the company provides for the buyers as well as suppliers :

IndiaMART for Buyers

• Convenience of connecting with sellers anytime, anywhere
• Wider marketplace with a range of products and suppliers
• Payment Protection Program

IndiaMART for Suppliers

• Enhanced business visibility
• Increased credibility for your brand
• Lead Management System
• Instant payment gateway, Pay with IndiaMART

Market Overview

The contribution of e-commerce to the whole retail market in the world is less than 4% and is expected to rise by 12% by 2026. The global B2B e-commerce market is valued at $10.6 trillion. Research by Frost and Sullivan predicts the expansion of B2B e-commerce sales globally, with China and U.S. leading the market. In terms of global B2B e-commerce share, Asia accounted for 78.5% in 2019 due to it’s staggering growth in China from $285 billion in 2014 to $1.13 trillion in 2019.

Both China and the U.S. have much higher levels of internet penetration than that of India. Moreover, India has a much wider geographical spread of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) which makes it a challenge for B2B e-commerce companies like Indiamart to expand and grow.

Growing at a rate of 50% annually, the Indian e-commerce market is estimated to reach $120 billion. Various digital e-commerce research reports show that 80% of the manufacturers in India will adapt to increasing investments in B2B e-commerce operations and 38% will increase their spending by 25% or more. This increase promises a huge space for B2B e-commerce businesses  in India.

B2B e-commerce predominantly has two business models — subscription and transaction. 

1. Subscription model: The platform charges a periodic subscription fee — monthly or yearly from buyers and sellers for using the platform. This model could also be a  freemium model where all the basic functionalities are free, but to get advanced opportunities, users have to pay a recurring fee. Multiple sellers compete with each other putting buyers at an advantage. IndiaMart follows this type of subscription model.
2. Transaction model: The platform charges a fee for executing each transaction on the platform. This, however, is profitable only when the platform promotes transactions and builds relationships between the service provider and the customer. In this model, users pay a transaction fee if they get a lot of value from what the platform offers. Udaan follows this type of model. Some B2B e-commerce platforms charge for listing on their sites. The listing could get further access to customers, and featured ads is another way to generate the revenues.

Competitors

• Alibaba Group: Alibaba Group, which is China’s leading B2B e-commerce company, was started to cater to small businesses. 

The Group’s primary businesses include Taobao Marketplace – a shopping site, 1688 – a wholesale marketplace for domestic trade in China among small businesses, Tmall.com – an online shopping platform for top quality international as well as Chinese branded merchandise, Juhuasuan – a buying platform, AliExpress – e-marketplace for global consumers, Alibaba.com – a global wholesale platform for small businesses, Alipay to facilitate online and mobile payment solutions in China and Alibaba Cloud Computing for developing platforms for cloud computing and data management. 

Alibaba went public with its IPO in 2007 at a valuation of US$10 Billion, which has grown to US$ 230 Billion within no time. Immediately after its IPO, Alibaba opened offices in India and started marketing its services to Indian Exporters. 

Alibaba.com has local offices in various parts of India including Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore and Ahmedabad. Alibaba gained a net income of over $20.3 billion in this fiscal year ending on March 31, 2020, showing an increase from $11.5 billion in the previous year.

• Justdial: A search service provider with a database of listings across categories was founded by VSS Mani. The company started offering local search services in 1996 under the Justdial brand, and became a dotcom company in 2007. It was the first mover in this space in India.

In 2020, Justdial had a database of approximately 29.4  million listings, of which 5.36 lakh listings were paid campaigns. Business owners have the option of listing their business on the database for free and if they wanted priority in listing or prominence, Justdial charged a fee. Justdial was listed on the Bombay stock exchange in 2013.  Justdial has its registered and corporate offices based in Mumbai, with branches in Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata and Pune.

• Tradeindia.com : Tradeindia.com is a B2B directory of India which consists of a database of more than 20 million Indian as well as global buyers and sellers. 

Tradeindia subsumes a huge number of company profiles and product catalogs under 1,581 different product categories and sub-categories. It is well promoted on all major search engines and receives an average of 20.5 million hits per month.

Tradeindia is maintained and promoted by INFOCOM NETWORK LTD. In 2020, tradeindia has a database of over 24,63,100 registered users, and the company is growing on a titanic scale with a considerable amount of new users joining/registering everyday.

• Global Sources Ltd.  :  Global Sources is a Hong-Kong based business-to-business (B2B) media company that facilitates trade between Greater China and the world. 

Global Sources delivers information on 4.3 million products and more than 196,000 suppliers annually through 14 online marketplaces, 13 monthly magazines, over 100 sourcing research reports and 10 specialized trade shows which run 32 times a year across nine cities.

Suppliers receive more than 43 million sales leads annually from buyers through Manufacturers: Global Sources alone. Wal-mart, Best Buy, Samsung and Carrefour are among the buyers that make use of the company’s trade services.

• Tradekey.com : TradeKey.com is an online Business-to-Business marketplace, specializing in facilitating global trade. It primarily engages in helping worldwide traders find new trade partners and business opportunities online. 

With over 9.5 Million visitors per month and over 4.5 million registered members from over 220 countries, TradeKey is becoming the first choice for any trade person.

TradeKey.com is the world’s first B2B marketplace that earned ISO 9001 Quality Management System and ISO 27001 Information Security System certifications, which clearly indicates the level of service it is delivering to its valued members and visitors.

Other than TradeKey international b2b marketplace, Tradekey.com also offers the localized b2b marketplace.

About the Organisation

Dinesh Agarwal and Brijesh Agrawal founded the website IndiaMART.com in 1996, a business-to-business portal to connect Indian manufacturers with buyers. The company got its first order from restaurant chain Nirulas. It managed to rope in 45 customers by March 1997 and the financial year ended with ₹ 6 lakh in revenue.easy’

IndiaMART IndiaMESH Ltd.  was India’s largest online B2B marketplace, which helped buyers source products and services from small and medium enterprises. It is an Indian e-commerce company that provides B2C, B2B, and customer to customer sales services via its web portal. 

Company is headquartered in Noida, Uttar Pradesh. Over the last 10 years, IndiaMART has become the largest e-commerce platform for businesses with about 60% market share. It handles 97,000 product categories — ranging from machine parts, medical equipment, and textile products to cranes, from thousands of towns and cities of India. In 2019, IndiaMART went public, and it was by far the first online B2B marketplace to go public. IndiaMART opened IPO to raise over ₹474 Crore at a price brand of ₹970- ₹973 on the 24th of June, 2019. IndiaMART IPO was fully subscribed by Day 2 and was oversubscribed by 36 times by the end of the final day of the bidding.

Throughout the decades, we have advanced as an incredible impetus of change for businesses, setting into movement a highminded cycle that starts with all the more paying clients, quicker item disclosure and developing network of purchasers, converting into improved traffic, enquiries and more providers with quality items drawing in more purchasers.

Timeline

Business model

At the core, Indiamart.com connects suppliers and buyers. The business model involves charging subscription fees from suppliers in exchange for listing their products on our platform.

IndiaMart offers a free service as well as paid membership to the users, mostly for the SMEs. Registration is free of cost for SMEs and as a part of the registration; SMEs get registered over the portal and are listed among their peers in the industry. As a part of registration, they also get a free website on the IndiaMart domain.

IndiaMart has an option to upgrade an account to get a paid membership to get high-end results. The membership account gives more business options to the SMEs. The company designs and creates web catalogs for the SMEs and provides them with a premium listing.

IndiaMart also works with the business model of pay per lead, which was first of its kind all across the globe when it was initially started. Through this model, SMEs can buy a business lead from a buyer after evaluating its relevance for their business.

Once the user gets a reasonable result from the PPL model, they can then buy the membership plan at a nominal amount. Through this model, suppliers have the option to choose from the listed business leads and can then get back to them to increase their sales.

Product and Services Directory

• Drugs and Pharmaceuticals 
• Books and stationary
• Food and Beverage 
• Industrial Plants and Machinery
• Industrial Supplies
• Building and construction
• Apparel and Garment 
• Electronic and Electrical
• Packaging machines and goods
• Product Rental and Leasing
• Sports good toy and Games
• Fashion Accessories and gear
• Gems and jewelry
• Home textile and furnishing
• Cosmetics and personal care 
• Yarn and fabrics
• Kitchen Utensils and Appliances
• Handicraft 
• Metal, Alloy and Minerals
• Automobiles Spare Parts 

 Service Offerings

1. Leading Supplier

• Higher Listing
• Position above Star Supplier

1. Star Supplier

• Higher Listing
• Position above TRUSTseal Members

1. Mini Dynamic Catalog

• It allows up to 50 products addition by IndiaMart
• A subdomain by IndiaMart in form of www.indiamart.com/companyname
• Standard product images
• Business Listing on IndiaMart network a) dir.indiamart.com   b)  Trade.indiamart.com
• 500 BL Credits

1. Maximiser

• It allows up to 100 products addition by IndiaMart
• A separate domain of the company – www.companyname.com
• Standard product images
• Business Listing on IndiaMart network a) dir.indiamart.com  b) Trade.indiamart.com
• TrustSEAL, 500 BL Credits

• TRUSTseal Members: IndiaMART then designed a unique scorecard, which was based on the availability of the documents like Company’s Registration Certificate, Partnership Deed, PAN Number, Import Export Code (IEC), Registration with Shops and Establishment Act, PF/ ESI Registration and many such similar documents. If a business scored the minimum qualifying score on this formula, it was eligible for IndiaMART’s TrustSEAL.
• BL Credits: IndiaMART’s “Buy Lead” (BL) product allowed interested suppliers to respond with their quotes and offers. BL emerged as a unique pay-as-you-go offering and rapidly started gaining popularity. With every BL package, few monthly credits were provided. The product won a prestigious award for innovative concept and execution.

Customer and their profile

The major customer segment for IndiaMART is the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). The market of this sector was worth $5billion in 2012, with approximately 8000 products from 11 million units. SMEs have larger business potential and export capabilities as this sector contributes 17% to India’s GDP and 40% of the country’s total exports.

The SMEs segment in India has been growing exponentially making India the second largest market for SMEs. With the evolution of the Internet, international buyers increasingly began looking to know more about their suppliers through the websites, though ordering and transactions were still offline.  Indian SMEs were increasingly adopting technology for the betterment of their businesses, with increased investments on PCs, internet and dedicated websites. 

SMEs can further be categorized on the basis of their level of operations i.e. Manufacturers, Distributors and Services. IndiaMART mainly focuses on the distributor segment which could be because the distributors can act as both buyers and sellers on the platform

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