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In a bold move, IndiaMART plans to double its business within five years, focusing on AI-driven discovery and initiatives aimed at building supplier trust. The growth trajectory will be propelled by the digitization of MSMEs and improved transaction financing. With recent reports highlighting a surge in profits and revenues, IndiaMART is also enhancing its seller and buyer verification processes to create a more reliable marketplace.
IndiaMART InterMESH is targeting a doubling of its business over the next five years as the country’s largest B2B marketplace focuses on AI-led discovery, supplier trust, MSME digitisation and transaction financing to drive its next phase of growth.
“We aim to grow in double digits year-on-year and if you compound that over a 3-5 year period, revenues, profits, supplier numbers and buyer numbers, all of them should double,” said Dinesh Agarwal, Founder and CEO, IndiaMART, in an interaction with ET Retail.
The company’s growth ambition comes after a strong Q1 FY27 performance. IndiaMART reported a 12.18 per cent rise in consolidated net profit at Rs 172.2 crore, compared with Rs 153.5 crore in the year-ago period. Revenue from operations grew 11.36 per cent to Rs 414.4 crore, while total income increased to Rs 521.1 crore during the quarter.
With Rs 3,553 crore in cash and investments, IndiaMART has also created a wholly owned subsidiary to enable transaction financing for MSMEs. However, Agarwal clarified that the move is aimed at strengthening the marketplace rather than building a lending business.
“The primary purpose is not to build a loan book or a large loan book. It is purely to enable better transaction financing on the marketplace. If successful, it can make the marketplace better, and marketplace revenue can grow better,” he said.
The company has been experimenting with lending partners for short-term working capital requirements, where transactions typically involve interest rates of around 1-2 per cent per month.
“This is not a big bank plan to go into lending or use our balance sheet. The objective is to improve the handoff between customers easily,” Agarwal added.
Monetisation and supplier growth remain focus areas
IndiaMART currently has around 8.8 million suppliers listed on its platform, with 2.18 lakh paying subscribers, creating a large monetisation opportunity.
Agarwal said the company’s historical growth has come from two key drivers, i.e., supplier additions and improved realisation from existing subscribers.
“Historically, 10-15 per cent of our growth has come from supplier addition and 5-10 per cent from monetisation. Since supplier addition has been muted over the last few quarters, most growth is coming from better monetisation and improvement in realisation,” he said.
The company expects realisation per supplier to continue growing at 5-10 per cent annually through service upgrades and periodic price increases, while improving supplier retention remains a priority.
AI to power cataloguing, matchmaking and trust
With 26 million business enquiries generated in a single quarter, IndiaMART believes its data advantage will be critical in building a stronger B2B ecosystem.
The company is deploying AI across buyer interactions, catalogue management, search and trust-building initiatives.
“One of the biggest use cases is voice listening. Earlier, it was a purely manual job. Today, AI allows us to listen to customers with better domain knowledge,” Agarwal said.
IndiaMART is currently applying AI-led voice analysis across nearly 1 lakh buyer calls every day. The company is also using large language models for category-wise content aggregation, catalogue cleaning and improving search accuracy.
“Earlier, content aggregation and auditing were purely manual. Now with large language models, they understand the domain and are able to do aggregation and cleaning better,” he added.
Building a trusted MSME marketplace
IndiaMART is strengthening seller and buyer verification to create a more reliable ecosystem.
The company has moved beyond mobile and email verification and is adding business-level checks.
“We are adding business bank account verification, which will help reduce the possibility of wrong payments being made between buyers and sellers,” Agarwal said.
The platform has also created a seller verification page where users can check business details, ratings and reviews.
“IndiaMART becomes a reference point for seller verification,” he added.
While IndiaMART has expanded into accounting software and invested in businesses such as Vyapar and RealBooks, Agarwal believes the core marketplace will remain the primary growth engine.
“The core subscription and advertising business is around Rs 400 crore of collections, while Busy and other businesses together contribute around Rs 60 crore,” he said.
Over the next five years, accounting-led businesses could collectively become a Rs 500 crore opportunity, but marketplace subscriptions and advertising will continue driving growth.
Online Coverage: Economic Times