Industrybuying grows 8X in 3 FYs, turns profitable based on SME ecommerce strategy

Industrybuying has turned its SME ecommerce business profitable after changing its strategy to focus on Private Brands in the industrial and business Ecommerce space.

The company is doubling in revenue every year, and has grown 8X over 3 years to 240 cr. It has limited competition in the space, with other competitors either being focused on large enterprises, or not being unit economics positive.

"Our focus is very profitably oriented, and consequently we target doubling every year, and at least 2% improvement in EBITDA per month. We wanted to first build a profitable SME ecommerce model and then hyper grow it, instead of the other way around. We have largely succeeded, and expect to be EBITDA profitable in the next quarter" said Swati Gupta, co-founder.

"Our large catalog of over 700,000 industrial and business products is unique. 80% of our sales come from products that are not available anywhere else online. Now with private brands, the catalog and price points become even stronger", she continued.

The company launched its private brands across 6 major categories a year ago. Since then, Private brands have quickly risen to form over a third of the company's revenue. Solar, Tools, Office furniture, Agri equipment and core MRO categories are proving to be hot sellers for the company.

"We spend a lot of time talking to customers, dealers identifying the right specifications and price points and obsessively analyzing our own ecommerce data, before finalizing products in any category. Consequently, we are seeing very attractive unit economics and are making money after covering marketing, freight and other costs of operations. Globally, margins of over 30-35% exist in industrial Private brands, we hope to replicate this in India," said Rahul Gupta, co-founder.

"We intend to expand our private brand portfolio to address 12 of the 19 major business categories we participate in, over next 2 quarters. In addition to ecommerce, we are also selling Private brands to our dealer network all over India through the platform and app. We are likely the only cross-category, private brand player with nation wide distribution in this sector both online and offline," he added.

"Customers have benefited from buying high quality branded products online. Anand Tomar, a farmer in Haryana, bought an Earth Auger from AgriPro, the company's Agri brand. I will now try their pesticide sprayer, and mini tiller. The price was cheap, product quality excellent, and I got door-delivery," said Anand.