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Become A Startup Insider With Inc42 Plus
Join our exclusive community of business leaders &makers for in-depth tech stories and intelligence on India’s tech economy you won’t find elsewhere.
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Become a Startup Insider in 2024 with Inc42 Plus. Join our exclusive community of 10,000+ founders, investors & operators and stay ahead in India’s startup & business economy.
Inc42 and Google Cloud recently held a round-table discussion in Bengaluru on ‘Leveraging Data and Analytics To Scale Efficiently’. It covered many critical components, including:
- The role of data and analytics in business development, operations and scaling
- How B2B startups can evolve and innovate their business solutions with data
- Why investing in modern tech infrastructure is imperative for business growth
Moderated by Chinnu Senthilkumar, managing partner and CTO of Exfinity Ventures, the event was attended by business leaders from various industries such as fintech, agritech and ecommerce.
The discussion also included:
- Akash Maheshwari, cofounder and CTO of MoveInSync
- Chintan Shah, head of internet and software business at Google Cloud India
- Deepankar Garg, VP of product of ITILITE
- Jawaid Iqbal, cofounder of Rupifi
- Nikhil Jaipuria, VP of technology at Zetwerk
- Santosh Desai, cofounder and CTO at Blowhorn
- Prashant Bhadauria, senior VP of tech, product and data at Klub
- Praveen Pankajakshan, VP of data science and AI at Cropin
- Saurabh Agarwal, founder and CTO at ReshaMandi
- Saurav Swaroop, cofounder and CTO of Velocity
- Sudhakar Pandey, founding team member and CTPO at Mensa Brands
How B2B Startups Can Bolster Growth And Scale Efficiently With Data
India’s business-to-business (B2B) startup ecosystem is a critical factor driving the country’s rapid transformation towards a digital economy. From ensuring supply chain efficiency and connecting suppliers, manufacturers and wholesalers via marketplaces to providing quick loans for accelerating SMB growth, B2B startups are doing it all. Hence, it is unsurprising that the B2B sector has registered steady growth and captured investor interest despite the funding winter.
According to Inc42’s latest report on the State Of Ecommerce, Q2 2022, B2B ecommerce was the most funded ecommerce sub-sector in Q1 2022 — accounting for more than 44% of the total ecommerce funding amount that stood at $1.9 Bn.
Besides, the rapid adoption of new-age tech infrastructure in the wake of the pandemic is bound to give a fillip to India’s B2B startups.
However, it may not be a smooth ride throughout as consumer preferences are changing rapidly. The question is: How can B2B startups build products and align their businesses with evolving consumer behaviour?
“Consumers want convenience at every front. So, it is imperative to keep the inventories close to consumers, supply chains efficient and deliveries fast,” said Santosh Desai of Bengaluru-based 3PL firm Blowhorn. If enablers can provide consumer data to supply chain partners, logistics efficiency can be achieved faster, he added.
This is a critical use case where data plays a vital role in driving business growth.
However, data has multipurpose uses across organisations, and the pain points for each sector are different and unique.
According to Sudhakar Pandey of Mensa Brands, “Most D2C brands leverage multichannel selling, which means the data is everywhere. This causes silos, and there is no fixed infrastructure to aggregate all the data at one place.”
For fintech startups, the issue lies in the stringent regulation and questions around data governance and data privacy.
“Your employees need to understand how data should be consumed for business needs. Teams should be trained thoroughly about concepts like data governance,” said Velocity’s Saurav Swaroop.
“We work closely with several consulting firms which can guide us through regulatory frameworks for data collection and storage proposed by the RBI,” said Jawaid Iqbal of B2B payment startup Rupifi headquartered in Bengaluru. Consider the RBI’s recent PPI mandate for lending tech companies. It shows how important it is for startups in this space to use data cautiously and in line with regulatory compliances.
There was more to learn from this discussion, from decoding the role of data in capex planning to unlocking new business opportunities with data and analytics. Tune in to this roundtable event to understand how data can be used to drive productivity and scale businesses.
