B2B Commerce Platform OfBusiness Raises $11 Mn From Zodius Capital, Others

B2B commerce company OfBusiness has raised about $11 Mn (INR 75 Cr) in a round led by Zodius. Existing investor Matrix Partners also participated in the round.

Gurugram-based OfBusiness was founded in 2015 by Asish Mohapatra, Bhuvan Gupta, Chandranshu, Nitin Jain, Ruchi Kalra, and Srinath Ramakkrushnan. It is a business-to-business (B2B) marketplace focussing on product commerce. It aims to provide products at better prices in time, through a comprehensive online and offline support like logistics and a credit platform.

The startup began operations in January 2016 and has expanded to five states focussing on the manufacturing and construction sectors.

OfBusiness said that it has served over 700 customers, with a repeat rate of over 60%. It claims that it has achieved profitability at net contribution margin positive level by focussing on specific clusters, rather than focussing on building a pan-India presence.

The company is present in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, NCR, Maharashtra and Odisha. It plans to expand to five more states, taking its presence to 30 clusters.

Founder Asish Mohapatra said, “Rather than a wide presence we have focussed on 10 clusters. Both construction and manufacturing are big sectors, and we wanted to go deep into the geographies we are in.”

Going forward, the company plans to set up a non-banking finance company (NBFC) subsidiary that will map customer data, specific products for SMEs and also lend to them. Currently, its has tie-ups with other NBFCs through which it provides loans to its customers.

Earlier in February 2016, OfBusiness had raised $5 Mn in a Series A funding round led by Matrix Partners India. Other participants in the round included Patni Group’s Apoorva Patni, Bhavish Aggarwal (Ola co-founder), Pranay Chulet (Quikr co-founder), Prashant Malik, Rohit MA, and Sumesh Menon, among others. Other startups in this segment include Power2SME, IndustryBuying, Tolexo, etc.

The development was reported by ET.