mjunction gets ready to take on Alibaba

The firm is planning an expansion drive in the west, north and southern regions of the country, driven by the Alibaba factor

It's not just e-commerce players like Flipkart and Snapdeal that are gearing up for Chinese major Alibaba's big India play.

India's largest business-to-business online marketplace mjunction, too, is planning an expansion drive in the west, north and southern regions of the country, driven by the Alibaba factor.

mjunction, a joint venture of Tata Steel and SAIL, with business segments such as metaljunction, coaljunction, valuejunction, buyjunction, straightline and financejunction, had provided technical solution for spectrum auction in March 2015.

The company believes the threat would come from China and not the US. "We are preparing, reinforcing, strengthening ourselves to take on Alibaba. I do not see at this point of time any internal competitor,'' said Viresh Oberoi, founder, chief executive officer and managing director of mjunction. Alibaba started off in the business-to-business space and they are masters at that, Oberoi said.

Founded in February 2001, mjunction offers a wide range of sales, fulfilment, sourcing, procurement, channel management, transaction processing and knowledge services across diverse industry verticals.

It has transacted business worth Rs 4,22,720 crore through 200,000 companies till FY16. These firms use mjunction’s e-platforms to buy or sell products, commodities and services online.

Although the company does not use gross merchandise value (GMV) as a business metric, it claims to have achieved a GMV of Rs 63,000 crore in 2015-16.

FAST FACTS

• The company operates eight businesses under three horizons. It started with metaljunction and then expanded into coaljunction, buyjunction, and financejunction
• It has done e-transactions worth Rs 4,22,720 cr since it started in 2001
• It has around 200,000 firms on its platform which use mjunction’s platforms to buy or sell products, commodities and services
• It runs the world’s largest e-marketplace for steel
• It has also pioneered the online sale of coal in India, and till date over 500 million tonnes of coal have been sold, earning Rs 30,000 cr of incremental revenue for Coal India and Singareni Collieries Company Limited over the past 10 years

It plans to clock 33 per cent growth and touch a GMV of Rs 88,000 crore by the end of the current financial year.

According to Oberoi, the only way to combat Alibaba is to grow fast. mjunction plans to bring in more private-sector clients as it believes Alibaba would be targeting private-sector and micro, small and medium enterprise players.

The company has 120 large industries and companies as paid clients.

“We do not have in mind the number of companies we are going to bring in. We have on our radar certain sectors such as steel, minerals, construction and manufacturing from where we will get more clients. In each sector, we have selected the top 20 players and we'll bring these on board,” he said.
 

He added, “We do not want to be number two; we are number one and like it that way. If anybody comes in, we would be happy if they come in at number two or number three."

The company has also expanded its overseas operations in Singapore, Australia and Dubai and is now entering Saudi Arabia. 

It is also hoping to get into a collaboration with a Dubai-based company to expand its operations in West Asia and Africa region.