New Delhi-based B2B online marketplace for industrial material, Industrybuying.com, has raised $9 Mn (INR 60 Cr) in Series B round of funding.The round was led by Bangalore-based Kalaari Capital and its existing investor SAIF Partners.
Besides, Beenext, which was recently launched by Teruhide Sato, also participated in the round.
With the new fundraise, the company plans to establish more fulfilment centres for processing orders for its vendors.
This round of funding has come just after seven months of previous funding. Prior to this, the startup had raised $2 Mn seed funding from venture capital and private equity firm SAIF partners.
Started in 2013 by brother-sister duo, Rahul Gupta and Swati Gupta, Industrybuying.com is a B2B platform to meet buying needs of small enterprises and offline businesses in hospitality, manufacturing and construction sectors.
The platform currently has a supplier base of somewhere between 1,500-2,000, which it is further planning to extend it to 10,000 by the end of this year.
Its clientele list include large enterprises including Motherson Sumi, Havells, RPG, Honeywell, Siemens, Tata Power and Escorts.
According to Walmart’s report, the B2B ecommerce market opportunity in India is currently valued at $300 Bn, which is expected to expand to $700 Bn by 2020.
The Indian ecommerce space has seen an exponential rise from B2C players like Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal among others.
However, experts believe that with the presence of global players in the Indian B2B market, there is a huge potential in the segment which is yet to be explored.
This segment has recently witnessed entrance of Amazon, which launched B2B portal Amazonbusiness.in. The company has also recently expanded its B2B platform to selected cities in Karnataka.
Another ecommerce behemoth is China-based Alibaba, which is also planning to enter the Indian market to cater the B2B segment, .Wal-Mart too had launched its B2B portal by the name BestPriceWholesale.co.in, in July last year and is now serving nine tier II cities in India.
Other players in this segment include Tolexo, BazarA2Z, Alliedhunt, Bizongo and more.
The B2B business also has the emeritus, Tatas, who launched their B2B portal in 2011 by the name tataB2B.com.
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