SUMMARY
The unicorn is looking at onboarding SMEs, traders, farmers and distributors through the app, which was launched on March 2
The app provides information about prices of raw materials, news related to industry and will help in reducing the current opacity in the market, OfBusiness cofounder Nitin Jain said
OfBusiness is looking to drive business conversations and transactions through the communities feature on the app. It will also provide real-time updates about orders placed through it
B2B marketplace OfBusiness has launched its mobile app to onboard small, medium and micro enterprises (SMEs), traders, farmers and distributors.
The unicorn aims to onboard 3-4 lakh SMEs within a quarter of the launch of the app.
Founded in 2016 by Asish Mohapatra, Ruchi Kalra, Vasant Sridhar, Bhuvan Gupta and Nitin Jain, OfBusiness facilitates procurement of raw materials, with a special focus on agriculture and building materials, for SMEs across India. It also provides cash-flow based financing to the SMEs through its financial arm Oxyzo, which became a unicorn in March last year.
Speaking about the app, OfBusiness cofounder Jain told Inc42, “We want to bring everything related to commodities at one place, whether it is prices, raw material tracking, discovery of raw materials, or getting any information related to raw materials.”
Jain said that there is too much opacity in the market currently, be it in pricing or news. As there are so many different suppliers and websites, manufacturers, SMEs, and farmers spend 4-5 hours just to get information.
“We want to reduce this time and help them concentrate on doing their real work, which is manufacturing,” he added.
What Features Does The OfBusiness App Offer?
The OfBusiness app has 10 categories to cater to different industries such as steel, nuts, spices and coffee, milk and dairy, among others. Users will be able to get the latest news related to industry, prices, among others, for each of the categories.
The app claims to provide access to over 300 materials, over 500 suppliers, and over 10,000 prices. Users can check pan-India prices of any material under the map and list views, Jain said.
It also provides real-time updates on the movement of raw materials and allows users to track their orders placed through it.
“Through this app, we are looking to build engagement. We are targeting SMEs, as well as micro enterprises, who want to check rates and other information. We are targeting traders, distributors and farmers as well. Farmers are unable to get access to as much information as they need, they are basically not able to sell at the price they want to sell. We want to eliminate any kind of price opacity that is there,” Jain reiterated.
Building Community To Grow Transactions On App
The unicorn is also looking at leveraging the app’s community feature, which would be available within 15-20 days from its launch, to generate transactions. The community feature will allow users to form industry-wise groups, such as steel community and sugar community, to drive business conversation and transactions within the groups.
“The number of leads we will get will be very intense and the number of people we will reach out to will be very large.The intent to form various communities is to have various interactions going on the app such as how to get material, how to get material quickly at a cheaper rate. This…information will increase the overall profitability of SMEs,” Jain said.
Besides, the app also has OfBusiness’s recently launched chatbot. The chatbot answers queries, written as well as through voice input, in English and Hindi.
OfBusiness, which is among the few profitable Indian unicorns, reported a 3.6X year-on-year (YoY) rise in its net profit to INR 201.11 Cr in FY22. Its revenue from operations rose over four-fold to INR 7,139 Cr in the fiscal year ended March 2022.
