Dinesh Agarwal, Founder and CEO, IndiaMart, believes that digitisation and significant capital investments in the last two decades have contributed towards the exponential rise of the Indian startup ecosystem
The Economic Survey 2021-22, released last month, showed that India had become the world’s third largest-startup ecosystem after the US and China. It notes that the government in that past year recognised over 14,000 new startups compared to 733 in 2016-17. Moreover, India saw a record 44 startups turning unicorns in 2021 and just two months into the new year, India has already registered ten unicorns. What explains this exponential growth of India’s startup ecosystem?
Dinesh Agarwal, Founder and CEO, India Mart, says that digitisation and significant capital investments in the last two decades have resulted in this dramatic growth of the Indian startup ecosystem.
“Twenty years ago, the whole venture capital or private equity capital or risk capital which doesn’t come with a debt mindset was not available. The whole concept of valuation and exits was probably not there. So, people were building the slow growth model of cash flow-based business approval. Secondly, the number of internet users jumped significantly due to the IT penetration, and in accordance with that, the number of mobile users went up. This gave a lot of opportunities to write software and start businesses. These two, I believe, have propelled the whole startup ecosystem in India to a great extent,” says Aggarwal.
Watch the complete video here to listen to Aggarwal elaborating on the digitisation aspect, what it means to be an entrepreneur, why people aspire to become an entrepreneur and whether founders should have a ‘Plan B?’
In order to build a flexible and supportive working environment for its employees, IndiaMART becomes the first Indian organization to move to a weekly salary pay disbursement regime. In line with the evolving flexi work culture & the changing motivational needs of the employees, the organization has taken this revolutionary step to enrich them with stability, purpose, and growth.
The consistent flow of money is essential to the well-being of any individual. We all know that employees receiving their salaries on time is probably more important than the rest of the HR initiatives combined. This is especially relevant in light of the current pandemic where millennia workers, who in many instances, live on their own away from home, struggle financially with their once-a-month pay-checks and are deeply impacted by the profound lack of flexibility in their payrolls. Now more than ever before, employees value experiences, financial freedom, a flexible work culture, and a work-life balance more than a simple collection of assets.
Weekly Payouts are, therefore, a big step in the direction of promoting employee wellness. Weekly payouts are already common in mature economies like New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong and the U.S. Their benefits have been tested out and proven over many years. Taking into account the benefits to the employees, their preferences as well as the changing dynamics of the global economy, IndiaMart has taken another first initiative to disburse the salaries on weekly basis rather than monthly.
Paying employees on weekly basis makes it easier for them to meet their real-time fiscal obligations. Not to mention how the excitement of the payday increases fourfold with the weekly payout, making employees more satisfied, happier, and, consequently, more motivated towards their purpose in the organization. Weekly Payout System, goes a big way in helping employees alleviate their financial hardships and regain control of their lives – positioning them for success in every aspect.
Speaking of his decision to introduce weekly payout, a first for any organization in the country, Dinesh Gulati, COO of IndiaMart has said, “Amidst the rapidly evolving Flexi work culture, instant gratification is what every employee expects. We believe weekly payouts will be appreciated by one and all across the organization. We had started taking steps in this direction many years back when we migrated to weekly incentive payouts for many roles across the organizations.”
IndiaMART has always been at the forefront of enhancing employee satisfaction. With the advent of the pandemic, IndiaMART was one of the first organizations to implement complete work from home and integrate relevant processes for the smooth operation of the business ensuring the safety of both employees and customers.
The company also noticed the limitations on opportunities available and the skill gap that was deepening because of the pandemic. So, for upskilling and providing financial assistance programs to their workforce throughout the pandemic, the company introduced programs like iLeaps, iBuds, and Own your Desktop that enabled IndiaMART employees to work efficiently from their homes by extending to them the resources to own their office laptops and providing discounted rates on online courses to expand their horizons.
Beyond their own workforce too, over the past two years, IndiaMART has taken several steps to reach the underserved segments of the workforce through their Online Associate program, onboarding over 3500 freelancers including persons with disabilities, women who were trying to return after career breaks and aspirants from remote locations.
Their new step is just another move in the same direction.
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Partners with Japan based firm to build India’s largest B2B e-commerce platform in MRO category
IndiaMart, the largest B2B marketplace of India, has acquired 26% (on fully diluted basis) share capital of IB Monotaro Private Limited (“Industry Buying”). The company acquired 8.1 lakh shares from Emtex Engineering Private Limited for a total consideration of INR 104.2 Cr.
Pursuant to this transaction, MonotaRO Co. Ltd. (Japan) will hold 51.6% stake, IndiaMart will hold 26% stake and Emtex Engineering Pvt Ltd (representing the promoter group and early investors) will hold 22.4% stake in Industry Buying.
Along with the core capabilities of discovery and conversation, this investment is aligned to the strategic vision of IndiaMART to enable commerce for the MSMEs. MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Operations Supplies) is a USD 50Bn market in India and is growing at a CAGR of 12% YoY. With the increased adoption of internet and GST shifting the market to online platforms, this tie-up possesses an opportunity for both IndiaMART and MonotaRO.
Speaking about the investment, Mr. Dinesh Agarwal, founder and MD of IndiaMART said “This transaction is a part of strategic initiative of moving towards commerce enablement. Category experience of MonotaRO combined with the IndiaMart leverage over buyers and suppliers in the domestic market will help in the future growth and expansion of this company.”
Masaya Suzuki, CEO, MonotaRO Japan commented “This capital participation by IndiaMart will further accelerate IB Monotaro’s growth in India, leveraging the B2B MRO e-commerce expertise MonotaRO has built up in Japan. We aim to become the leading B2B e-commerce platform in India”
Swati Gupta, CEO IMPL commented “IndiaMart is the largest online B2B marketplace in India. MonotaRO possess expertise in the industrial B2B ecommerce and IndiaMart has deep understanding about the Indian markets. We are very excited to partner with both of them and take industrybuying.com to new heights in the coming years”
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While welcoming the Union Budget 2022, Mr Dinesh Agarwal, Founder & CEO, IndiaMART InterMESH Limited stated, “With respect to the MSME sector, we congratulate the Union Budget 2022 for the vision. MSMEs will be supported through an extension of the Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme (ECLGS) through March 2023, which will increase the guarantee cover by Rs 50,000 crore to Rs 5 lakh crore. The ‘Effective Capital Expenditure’ which is estimated at INR 10.68 lakh crore will be about 4.1 percent of GDP implies that Government is focused on strengthening domestic industry which will aid economic growth and job creation.
This year’s Budget also emphasized on the startup ecosystem. Furthermore, the focus on digitization will strengthen online marketplaces to reach a wider audience, thereby creating a path for strong growth. The tone of the Budget was clearly pointing toward the priority areas defined as engines of growth for becoming a 5 trillion economy. It was a genuine effort to meet the GDP target as envisaged in the Economic Survey; we wish to see the year as the ‘year of growth’.
CIOs in any organization is more important now than they have ever been
Digital transformation is the key and this will become the single most important factor for the measurement of success for the CIOs
This is an exclusive story conducted by Santosh Vaswani, Content Writer & Editor at CIO News with Vivek Agrawal, Chief Information Officer (CIO) of IndiaMART InterMesh Limited on his professional journey.
When asked about his plans in his career path to be a successful CIO, Vivek Agrawal, Chief Information Officer (CIO) of IndiaMART InterMesh Limited, in an exclusive interview with CIO News said, “Honestly speaking, I never planned to be a CIO, it just happened. I joined IndiaMART as an Assistant Product Manager in December 2010 and worked over multiple products in my 7.5 years of Product Management role until April 2018. I always went deep and built good control over both product and technology for all the products I owned. This, coupled with a good business understanding made me a strong contender for the CIO role in April 2018.
When asked about IndiaMART InterMesh Limited and his key business priorities, he said, IndiaMART is India’s largest online B2B marketplace, connecting buyers with suppliers. With a 60 per cent 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.
The key business priorities of IndiaMART include:
When asked about digital technologies he plans to implement in an e-commerce company, he said, some of the important digital technologies an e-commerce company must implement are:
When asked about the future an e-commerce industry can expect after the implementation of digital technologies, he said:
Seamless UX on Mobile platform (Website and App)
Cloud-based server/tech stack
Shifting the tech stack/servers to the cloud gives the immediate following impact:
Voice Assistants based platform usage:
With the new internet user-base coming from Tier 2 & 3 towns, the e-commerce platform must be very easy to use for this user base. Enabling Voice-based typing and searches does this perfectly.
Today there are ready-made tools available which one can integrate with the website and enable the voice assistants.
Image Search:
This has always been the need of all e-commerce platforms as most of the time it is very difficult to explain the buyer’s requirement in keywords.
However, image recognition was not very successful until some years ago. Now that good readymade algorithms and tools are available in the market, image search has become a must for all e-commerce platforms.
Artificial Intelligence-based personalization and recommendation:
User personalization on an e-commerce platform is very important for better user engagement and conversion. Artificial Intelligence-based algorithms help provide strong personalized recommendations leading to improved user satisfaction.
Efficient checkout and payment process:
Checking out along with the payment process on any e-commerce platform should be the easiest process without any friction. Single-click checkout and a single-click payment system enable e-commerce platforms to achieve the best conversions.
For easing the payment process, there are good white label solutions available in the market which must be explored.
Automated shipping tracking:
Once the order is placed, every customer wants to track the status of his order and shipment. Single-click order and shipping status visibility is the most desired feature at this stage.
Seamless API integration with the shipment providers or an aggregator helps here. This is a must for e-commerce platforms. This results in customer gratification increasing customer loyalty. A loyal customer uses the platform repeatedly reducing the incremental cost of customer acquisition.
Chatbots based 24/7 customer assistance:
Customer support/assistance plays a vital role in customer satisfaction. Chatbots have taken customer support to the next level by making it available round the clock adding to the customer gratification.
Chatbots also bring in more control over customer communication and reduce errors and repeated executive training.
When asked about the challenges faced by a CIO today in the e-commerce industry while implementing digital technologies and how can CIOs overcome the challenges, he said, I feel the following 2 are the biggest challenges for CIOs today:
Data Security & Data Protection:
Data security has always been difficult for CIOs. The advent of AI and movement to SAAS & Cloud-based platforms have only added to the security threats.
To overcome this, CIOs need to be extra vigilant towards the detection of such threats and training their systems against them. AI-based protection systems shall help in strengthening their systems.
Digital Transformation:
Changing the existing business ERP user flows becomes very difficult when the entire organization is already used to the old flow and measures productivity on the same. Being able to share innovative solutions and getting agreement from all stakeholders can sometimes become nightmares as there will always be a lot of resistance to change.
CIOs need to be more proactive and more involved in the entire Digital Transformation process. They should lead from the front to bring in all the confidence and help in executing the digital transformation initiatives.
Digital Transformation is an important responsibility of all the stakeholders and not only the CIO. This will ensure that everyone takes full responsibility for the successful digital transformation.
When asked about best practices, industry trends, and advice he would like to suggest to fellow CIOs for their successful professional journey, he said:
He said CIOs in every organization are more important now than they have been ever. This has led to 100s of CIO vacancies in the market today. It is now important for the new CIOs to learn faster and stay relevant. Digital transformation is the key and this will become the single most important factor for the measurement of success of the CIOs.