The season is raining funding for the early startups and some well-established players who hold the potential and have won the trust of the investors in terms of revenue and returns.
Moglix, a business-to-business online marketplace for industrial goods operated by Moglilabs Pvt. Ltd. bagged a Series B round funding of $12 Million (approximately Rs 77 Crore) from Rocketship, a venture capital based in Silicon Valley, and IFC (International Finance Corporation, World bank’s private sector investment arm. The company’s current investors such as Jungle Ventures, Accel Partners, and Venture Highway were also the part of the funding round. One of the renowned personality of India, Ratan Tata, also backs the B2B firm.
The company stated that it will utilize the funds to expand operations and reinforce its technology infrastructure.
Moglix at the present stage operates in cities such as Chennai, Delhi-NCR, as well as Pune and now it plans to stretch its arms in three more cities.
Founder and CEO of Moglix, Rahul Garg said, “the funding will enable us to enhance offerings and service to the customers in a better way as supply chain and manufacturing process are making its way towards digitization drastically.” Before starting Moglix in 2015, Garg was the head of Google’s Ad Exchange services division of Southeast Asia region.
Moglix has a wide variety of products listed on its platform including fasteners, industrial electricals, MRO, industrial products, pneumatics, safety accessories, and hardware. It has tied up with more than 1,500 distributors and manufacturers that deal in these categories in India, Taiwan, and China. The platform has over 2 Lakh SKU listed on its portal. The company is presently catering to more than 1 Lakh SME’s and over 200 large manufacturing facilities. It has some big names such as Havells, IndiaForge, and Lumax.
The startup company has received a total of $18 Million of funding, of which $4.2 Million was led by Accel Partners along with SeedPlus and Jungle Ventures last year. It had also received an unrevealed funding from Rata Tata last year.
Focusing on the funding for the similar B2B model, Udaan.com raised an investment from Lightspeed Venture partners. Industrybuying.com closed the deal of 12 Crore in the form of debt from Trifecta Capital in 2016. The firm is also backed by SAIF Partners and Kalaari Capital. In addition, Omnikart, a Mumbai-based industrial equipment marketplace, happened to shut its operations owing to the mutual disputes among the founders based on the growth strategy.
