IndiaMART

OutLook

New Delhi, Apr 29 (PTI) B2B e-commerce firm Indiamart Intermesh on Thursday posted a 26 per cent increase in consolidated net profit to Rs 56 crore for the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2021.

The company had posted a net profit of Rs 44 crore in the same period a year ago.

Total income of the company increased by about 1 per cent to Rs 190 crore during the reported quarter from Rs 187 crore in the corresponding period of 2019-20.

“Strong response from global and domestic investors leading to successful closure of QIP offering in this volatile market environment further demonstrated their confidence in the business model. 

“During these trying times, we remain committed to employee safety and customer centric approach helping businesses grow through on-line transformation,” Indiamart Intermesh CEO Dinesh Agarwal said in a statement.

During the reported quarter, Indiamart completed its qualified institutional placement (QIP) of equity shares by raising Rs 1,070 crore. The company plans to use the proceeds for future growth and expansion.

“With a stronger balance sheet we will continue to invest in strengthening our value proposition further, positioning us well to leverage the emerging long term market opportunities,” Agarwal said.

For the year ended March 31, 2021, Indiamart Intermesh posted a 90 per cent increase in consolidated net profit to Rs 280 crore compared to Rs 147 crore in 2019-20.

Total income of the company increased by 7 per cent to Rs 756 crore in 2020-21 from Rs 707 crore in the preceding fiscal.

The board of directors has recommended a final dividend of Rs 15 per share for the fiscal year 2021, subject to shareholder approval. PTI PRS ABM ABM

investyadnya

IndiaMART is India’s largest and the world’s second largest online B2B marketplace. It is a platform that connects buyers and sellers across time-zones and borders through business solutions. However, their journey of reaching this pinnacle is no less of a roller coaster ride with copious ups and downs.

In today’s blog we look at how IndiaMART InterMESH reinvented their business model from time to time, by persistently adapting to the changing environment and understanding the needs of Indian SME businesses.

Let’s begin with the tale of Mr. Dinesh Agarwal, the Founder & CEO of IndiaMART InterMESH Ltd.

Mr. Dinesh Agarwal was born in a traditional business family in Uttar Pradesh’s Napara District, in close proximity to the Nepal border. He attended a Hindi medium government school and went on to graduate from HBTI, Kanpur with a B.Tech. in Computer Science. After working with several prominent companies, in 1992 he landed a job with HCL and relocated to United States.

This was when Mr. Dinesh Agarwal had his eureka moment. He says in an interview –  

“I had been using basic internet like email since long but a major turning point in my career was when I saw a webpage opened on a colleague’s computer while I was working in US. That was the first time that I felt that internet is going to be a driving force. I felt as if the whole world is converging on that webpage. It was such a euphoric moment for me to witness that one can access any information with just a click. I call this moment as a turning point in my career because it was then that I realised that I wanted to work in the field of internet.”

To quote Paulo Coelho – “Life was always a matter of waiting for the right moment to act.”

Dinesh’s right moment to act came on 15^th August, 1995 when Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao announced that BSNL would provide internet connectivity in India. Having witnessed the birth and evolution of internet in America, Dinesh’s entrepreneurship bug revived. He left HCL and came back to India to start an internet company – indiamart.com.

Dinesh believed that Indian Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) would benefit the most from the forthcoming internet boom. However, in 1996, India had a dearth of computers and lacked imperative internet infrastructure. Thus, instead of creating websites for individual businesses, IndiaMART developed one website for connecting Indian suppliers with the international buyers in a simple, cost-effective manner.

Inorder to establish a sustainable business model, IndiaMART created an online version of Yellow Pages for India – an online directory of Indian exporters. Their first tagline was: ‘The Global Gateway To Indian Marketplace’.

As Mr. Dinesh Agarwal states in an interview with Forbes India –

“Understanding that exports were very important for the Indian economy, we realised that there for a price opacity and limited information about Indian products for the American importer. We started with that opportunity. Back then, we got online enquiries from the US and every night, we printed them, faxed them overnight and then sent them by post the next day. This went on for five years. The internet really only took off when the dot com boom happened in 1999-2000. The focus shifted to computers, e-mail, content-building, more suppliers, and more exporters online.”

The dotcom bubble burst and 9/11 attacks put a damper on IndiaMART’s aggressive growth spurt. Their revenues almost halved in a short stretch of time, employee salaries were delayed and things took a turn for the worse. Nevertheless, Mr. Dinesh Agarwal was tenacious and refused to throw in the towel. He navigated the company through these choppy waters and soon enough business was back on track.

In 2007-09, the Global Financial Crisis led to a recession in the US, and Indian exports flattened out. IndiaMART once again found itself behind the eight balls. Here is when Dinesh Agarwal made up his mind to pivot towards the India-focused B2B market and raised $10 million in Series-A funding round from Intel Capital. With the passage of time, they introduced various value-added features to their marketplace platform like – catalog creation and premium number service.

With a new model and fresh capital, IndiaMART was firing on all cylinders. They spread their wings and opened 52 offices in 52 weeks. As a result, their sales grew 10 times in a year.

In 2012, IndiaMART experienced yet another setback as our economy slowed down. They reported a loss for the first time since inception. They truly hit rock bottom. They lost their stakeholder’s trust and Dinesh Agarwal admits he was scared to even leave home.

This adversity became their stepping stone to success. Dinesh Agarwal and his team went back to the drawing board and revamped their entire business model. They made some big changes, scaled back and stopped hiring. They switched from their earlier lead generation model to a Buy-Lead model, thereby finding a new product-market fit.

IndiaMART launched their mobile application and streamlined their website, thereby leveraging technology for better product and price discovery. They also started providing digital and telephonic assistance to convert buyer enquiries into sales.

Promptly, IndiaMART metamorphosed from a traditional classified platform to a completely buyer-centric transaction completion platform. In the process, their core principles and values have stood steady as a rock. Even today, IndiaMART do not charge a penny in any commission or transaction fee from their buyers. They operate a subscription-based model for suppliers.  

With the burgeoning B2B e-commerce in the country, IndiaMART launched Tolexo.com in 2014 – the online shopping store for business and industrial goods.

Over the course of time, scaling up Tolexo was proving to be an uphill task and profitability was elusive. Maybe they bit on more than they could chew. Hence, Dinesh Agarwal called the shots and merged the IndiaMART platform with Tolexo. Surprisingly, it worked like a charm and they’ve stuck to it since then. This is the reason why IndiaMART doesn’t look like a boring classifieds website; it’s like Amazon for B2B products.

An advocate for simplifying the internet experience, Mr. Dinesh Agarwal expresses in an interview –

“While we are a technology company, users should see us as a functional company—not a technology company. My mantra is—let the user get his job done without being exposed to the jargons of technology or the technology hurdles.”

In their pursuit of making product-matchmaking easier for businesses, they’ve successfully on boarded umpteen SMEs from rural India. As a matter of, around 33% of the traffic on their platform stems from tier 3 and 4 cities, smaller tehsils, and villages of India.

As of December 2020, IndiaMART has more than 119 million buyers, 6.4 million suppliers, and a whopping 71 million+ products & services. With 60% market share of the online B2B Classified space in India, their channel focuses on providing a platform to SMEs, Large Enterprises as well as individuals.

The management team at IndiaMART has thoroughly embraced the methodology of Learn-Unlearn-Relearn. They’ve had the courage to bite the bullet, by reinventing their business model from time to time and persistently adapting to the fickle environment.

While perusing through several interviews of Mr. Dinesh Agarwal, we came across something that candidly struck a chord with us. We are sure it will inspire you as well –

“One of the things that I have learned is to ‘never give up and I keep telling my team that it’s better to try and fail than to sit and regret. I believe that everyone has a 100% chance of succeeding in life. Everyone I think is born with at least 20% of luck. But you will have multiple failures in life. So, if you try only once, the chance of success becomes zero. But if you try it five times, your luck at succeeding at it becomes 100%.”

Techstory

Being in the business for 25 years takes a hell lot of hard work & determination. Little did the businesses get a clue of their own existence and journey. Therefore; its rightly said that business are meant for an infinite life period where you cannot predict what’s next.

Facing the business fluctuations; it’s tough to touch such a great position even though you are the leader in the segment.

The recent buzz is about the same. We have a 25 year celebration of the leading company; Indiamart that has established its name in a quite fulfilling manner.

MORE ABOUT INDIAMART

The company is a major e-commerce company that gives B2C, B2B & sales service through its web sites & portals. It was incepted by Dinesh Agarwal & Brijesh Agarwal in the year 1996. The website is called indiamart.com that caters to the requirements of manufacturers & buyers.

The headquartered is in Noida. They had a total of Rs. 72.3 crore in the domain of 2019 fiscals which are currently 76% of the total traffic. The app has more than Rs. 1 crore downloads with a 4.7 app rating.

The company went public in the year 2019 and technically was the first business to business to enter the market. The issue was oversubscribed by 36 times. The revenue till December 2020 at Rs. 565 crore with an 11% year on year growth. The user base has also been doubled since the year 2018 and has reached the 100 million mark in the last year.

The funding details of the company up till now are:

The story started quite a lot years back; where the company managed to get its first 45 customers. A revenue of 6 lakh was achieved in the initial year.

But by the time 2000’s came into picture; the internet penetration started; the company took a boom. Expansion was the major focus and sky rocketing was the major motive.

Last year they had a revenue of Rs. 1crore 10 Lakh. From the 2008 financial crisis to 2020 covid ; it had witnessed all.

First Business To Business Marketplace to reach 100 million

66 million products
100k categories
6 million sellers listed

The founder showed his gratitude by a tweet stating that “Thank you our valued customers , team members and all stakeholders for making this journey a fulfilling one..”

Challenges definitely make life tough; but you cannot manage to excel unless you are ready to face the. Business has a simple mantra that comprises two basic objectives; one to survive  & other to be profitable.

Profits are the strategic advantage that you get while survival is a matter of concern because you cannot close the doors of competition.

Therefore; this 25 is very important as the 25 years of struggle that Indiamart chose to do was quite commendable. The journey ahead is going to be more fruitful & hopefully the next 25 would be more fascinating.

Inc42

Exactly 25 years ago, when Brijesh Agrawal and Dinesh Agarwal started IndiaMART, a business-to-business marketplace linking buyers and suppliers, they wouldn’t have expected that it will become an INR 24,000 Cr behemoth and according to KPMG, India’s largest online B2B marketplace.

Founded by Brijesh Agrawal and Dinesh Chandra Agarwal in 1996 and incorporated in 1999, when the internet was still a luxury in India, IndiaMART got its first order from restaurant chain Nirula’s and founder Dinesh Agarwal didn’t shy away from showing his gratitude through his tweets to investors.

The company managed to rope in 45 customers in the first year of its inception and it ended its first fiscal with INR 6 Lakh in revenue at a time when ecommerce operations were nascent in India. By 1999, the internet ecosystem would experience an exponential boom in India with the dotcom bubble. The valuation of digital companies skyrocketed and IndiaMART expanded as well. It hit a milestone of achieving revenue of INR 1 Cr with INR 10 Lakh profit in the year.

By the time, the Indian ecommerce market grew with the likes of Flipkart and the entry of Amazon, IndiaMART had survived the 2008 financial crisis. It raised INR 50 Cr from global venture capital firm Intel Capital in 2009, and the following year it reported a revenue of INR 50 Cr.

By the time it got listed on the BSE in June 2019. the company had managed to create a niche in the B2B ecommerce market, despite the entry of Udaan, Moglix and Infra.Market and other players in the same space. It managed to double its registered user base from 50 Mn in December 2018 and reached the 100 Mn user mark in the last quarter of FY 2020. Notably, the company has a strong presence in Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets as only 33 to 34% of its traffic come from the top eight metro cities. It also claimed that controls 60% of the total B2B ecommerce market. Given its reach, IndiaMART attracted adulation from various corners of the startup ecosystem on its silver jubilee.

He also said that the larger geographical reach and product assortment has helped the company record 10 Cr buyers on its platform. The IndiaMART CEO claimed this is the first B2B marketplace to reach this mark. With 66 Mn products listed in over 100K categories ranging from groceries to electronics, this allows the company to attract large numbers of buyers and sellers. Besides this, the platform also has close to 6 Mn sellers listed on the platform.

“Because of this large base, our penetration in Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets is strong. At IndiaMART, only 33 to 34% of our traffic comes from the top 8 metro cities. Rest of the traffic comes from Tier II and Tier III towns and especially from small villages and tehsils and districts across India,” Dinesh told Inc42 in February last year.

As per its last financial statement, IndiaMART recorded total revenue of INR 565 Cr for the first nine months, from April to December-end, of the current fiscal year FY2021, according to the company’s filings with the Bombay Stock Exchange. With an average quarterly profit of INR 70 Cr, IndiaMART could comfortably cross the INR 300 Cr mark in FY21.

Business Standard

Indiamart Intermesh, through its wholly owned subsidiary, Tradezeal Online, has agreed to acquire 11.01% stake of Legistify Services through SSHA signed between the parties.

Legistify Services, via its flagship product Legistrak, offers a SaaS (software as a service)-based ERP tool which allows enterprises to manage their legal workflows. Some of the key features of the Legistrak tool are litigation tracking, notices management, legal vendor management, etc.

Indiamart said that this investment is in line with its long-term objective of offering various SaaS based solutions for businesses. Indiamart Intermesh, through its wholly owned subsidiary, Tradezeal Online intends to invest a total a total cash consideration of Rs 1.30 crore. It will acquire 100 equity shares and 1,146 Compulsorily Convertible Preference Shares (CCPS) (as part of the primary fundraise by the entity) and 1,580 CCPS (from existing investors via a secondary purchase).

The final aggregate shareholding of the company, post this investment, in the said entity would be 11.01% on a fully converted and diluted basis. The announcement was made during market hours today, 30 March 2021.

Shares of Indiamart Intermesh gained 0.27% to Rs 7,803 on BSE.

IndiaMART is India’s largest online B2B marketplace for business products and services. The company makes it easier to do business by connecting buyers and sellers across product categories and geographies in India through business enablement solutions.

The company reported 29.35% rise in consolidated net profit to Rs 80.20 crore on 9.2% rise in total income to Rs 198.20 crore in Q3 December 2020 over Q3 December 2019.

Business Standard | Investing.com