What does building a B2B Commerce company means for industrial India?

Moglix CEO and founder, Rahul Garg, spoke to Anand Daniel, early stage VC investor at venture capital firm Accel, in a 30-min Insights Podcast Series that brings together views of experts and first-time entrepreneurs from successful Indian start-ups. Read his excerpts from the interview below:

Before starting Moglix, Rahul had held various senior leadership positions at large organizations including Google in Asia Pacific. He founded the company with the vision of building a b2b commerce company in India and started bringing an experienced team together, setting up the tech and the supply, and went after the demand soon after. Observing the value proposition and business models from across the globe, Rahul realized early on that the cross border commerce was still in its infancy and there was greater opportunity in developing a transaction platform in India.

How did Moglix convert its first customer?

Rahul said that Moglix’s early customers were in the automotive sector and their main challenge was to centralize their supply chain across multiple plants. Moglix delivered on quality, cost and time – the three important parameters that manufacturing organizations really care about. If you’re selling to medium and large enterprises, Rahul said, you need an enterprise sales team. “It is not just true for start-ups but for all small and large organizations. Let’s not forget, CEO is the first sales guy in the organization,” he added.

What’s the different between B2B and B2C — buying behavior and differences in customers?

In B2B, decision-making is complex. Rahul said, we navigate the process part of business decision-making combined with the commerce engine to make it happen.  “Consumers are lot more non-frequent buyers as compared to businesses. You cannot afford a bad business experience in B2B. Businesses are also risk-averse; so their reliance is more, leading to a network-effect,” added Rahul.

Rahul also covered the following points in the podcast:

• Importance of market size and, conversely in especially large markets
• What comes first in a marketplace?
• Cash flow — rethink cash cycles for your business
• Winning in the space — How Moglix is building a well-loved and resilient business

Please listen to the complete podcast below –