Backed by Intel Capital with Bennett, Coleman & Company Ltd as one of its investors, online listing platforms for small and medium businesses, IndiaMART is soon going to launch online retail marketplace named as Tolexo.com which is expected to go live in a month.
Brijesh Aggarwal, co-founder and director of IndiaMART.com stated that bigger opportunity lies in categories, which no one is currently focusing on, thus the new platform will be coming up with the categories which will be extremely different from what Flipkart or Snapdeal already has such as home and office supplies.
Tolexo will not be stocking all the product categories, and is expected to launch home, office and industry supplies in the first two years. The new platform would look to raise about $100 Mn over next two to three years.
IndiaMART.com, an online business to business (B2B) marketplace, offers a platform & tools to over 1.4 Mn suppliers to generate business leads from over 6.5 Mn buyers. It had earned revenue of Rs200 Cr in March 2014. There are over 1.25 lakh leads being generated every month on IndiaMart. The company has over 2800 employees located across 50+ offices in the country. Last year it had introduced IndiaMART mobile site — m.indiamart.com and Android App.
IndiaMART already has a significant seller base thus, bringing sellers on the new platform will not be a difficult task and it will not require it to spend money and energy on attracting sellers. While ecommerce market is anticipated to be worth $22 Bn in the next five years, thus there lies a huge opportunity for the ecommerce players. But not to forget opportunity comes with competition, let’s see how IndiaMART’s Tolexo competes with the existing players.
