Prior to the COVID19 pandemic, manufacturing enterprises in India often relied on a highly fragmented supplier base. With few exceptions, replacing hundreds of vendors with a few strategic ones was not common. Procurement teams often made multiple small value purchases. Often, and perhaps by design each supplier got a small piece of the procurement pie, depriving them of opportunities to scale up. No supplier had the incentive to think beyond the purchase order at hand and invest in best practices, process improvements, systems and customer-dedicated investments.

Communication with suppliers was done largely through paper records, emails, and spreadsheets.  While many firms used ERP systems, few suppliers were integrated seamlessly with those ERPs.

The pandemic severely tested this inefficient system. Overnight, suppliers were shut either due to regulation or due to shortage of manpower. Communication channels broke down. Working capital was a challenge. Order tracking and visibility was non-existent. Finding alternate suppliers was a slow and arduous process. In short, the supposedly solid supplier ecosystem, wasn’t quite what it was made out to be.

Building back better for women means challenging the status quo of women’s participation in the economy. Women constitute 48% of the population but form only 21% of the workforce. For the MSME sector, it means raising the bar above its current contribution of 30% of the GDP.

Impact of the Pandemic on the MSME Sector and Women

Last year at the height of the first wave 43% of the MSME sector, that is 75 Million MSMEs were faced with the risk of closure. The threat to the MSME sector implied that 33% of India’s manufactured output and the job opportunities for a substantial proportion of 120 million people were at risk.

Women’s participation in the economy is one of the quickest ways of empowerment and sustainable growth. The pandemic has negatively impacted 73% of women entrepreneurs, and 20% had their revenue nearly wiped out. Another 35% of the women entrepreneurs experienced a decline of 25%–75% in revenue.

Women Can Turn Around the fortunes of the MSME Sector

● Connect Womens’ Entrepreneurial Spirit to Market Access

● Enable Digital Empowerment of Women

● Connect Women Entrepreneurs to Digital Credit Platforms

If 50% of women join India’s workforce, the Indian economy can add up to 9 percentage points to the real GDP growth rate.

Moglix is a digital solutions enterprise with an obsession for customer service. The excellence of our supply chain operations defines who we are and what we do to meet our customers’ requirements. Furthermore, I believe that leadership wins through superior logistics. Our success in the B2B commerce space is rooted in our ability to leverage technology to bring greater visibility and predictability to the supply chain journey for our customers.

We have always believed that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This is reflected in our endeavor to roll out a full-stack integrated operating system for procurement and supply chain.

Be it our Moglix Supplier Central application for procurement and supplier relationship management, our Moglix catalog for indirect procurement, the Moglix Buyer’s app for order management and real-time order tracking, or the warehouse and field management system for efficient logistics operations, users from our customer enterprises get to access all these modules or customized bundles from a single operating system.

Moglix’s technology has always been about unlocking new avenues of efficiency through the integration of suppliers, customers, and logistics. At Moglix, we are using technology to build smarter and faster procurement and logistics solutions for creating a great customer experience.

Moglix has launched an ad film as part of its ongoing #MoglixHaiNa (there is Moglix) campaign. The campaign is aimed at showcasing the burden faced by procurement managers in sourcing daily responsibilities. 

Conceptualized by Bedlam Studios, the film looks to educate customers about the ease and convenience offered by Moglix through its e-commerce platform. The film is staged against the backdrop of a procurement talent hunt. The procurement manager Mishraji attends the hunt organized by his team and is introduced to a magician, who his team claims can procure any material through magic. In the middle of the act, the magician forgets the magic spell and still denies defeat. Meanwhile, Mishraji showcases the ease of buying on the Moglix app to get timely delivery and assured quality of the items required.

“We wanted to showcase the lives of procurement managers in a fun way, to bring the spotlight on procurement teams who are the backbone of the organization but not recognized or celebrated. The films try to bring to life the quirks of daily work life in a procurement department, a segment that has never before been addressed before.”

says Pallavi Chelluri, Director, Moglix

“India operated pretty much without catalogues pre-Moglix. We are ecstatic with the launch of the ‘Moglix Hai Na’ digital campaign which catapults Moglix as a brand that is building the catalogue for India. We are confident that this campaign will resonate with our brand’s philosophy and further strengthen our position as India ka catalog across India.”

says Jigyasa Kishore, Senior Director, Moglix.

The campaign is rolled out on digital and OTT platforms.

In an exclusive interview with Analytics India Magazine, Sandeep Goel, Senior Vice President, Strategy and Operations, Moglix, shares his insights and experience in the tech industry.

“Today, every organization is developing solutions specific to their needs. Still, portable models will become available over a period where models developed by one organization will be easily reusable by others, bringing speed to the deployment of AI/ML solutions,”

says Sandeep Goel

By leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms, Moglix has been able to achieve major objectives such as clean data, accurate search results, data-driven decision making, cost optimization, 4X better efficiency, and better governance.

“At Moglix, our focus is on building products and solutions for our internal consumption and customers. Our experience in supply chain digitization, master data management, data mining, and procurement analytics is the core of our business,”

says Sandeep

Some of the programming languages used predominantly by our data science/analytics team are Java, Scala, PHP, Python, Angular. 

Our tool stack includes Scikit, SpaCy, RabbitMQ, Cassandra, Mongo, ElasticSearch, and Apache. Other libraries include Pandas, Numpy, FBProphet, NLTK, SciPy, PDFminer, Pytesseract, APScheduler. For database management, we use an SQL server. Also, we use Matplotlib, Seaborn, Plotly for visualization, and GitHub for tracking.

Moglix enters the UAE as part of its global expansion plans. We will enable enterprises across the Manufacturing, Oil & Gas and Infrastructure sectors to transform their end-to-end supply chain, from procurement to distribution. Through our digital platform, supplier and buyer network, and logistics strength,
we bring down cost, enhance sales, improve operational efficiency, and make  the supply chain touchless.

“We are excited to enter the UAE. UAE is a gateway to the GCC and a major hub of global commerce and innovation with a vision to transform into a Digital economy. The UAE government’s mission and investment in digital upskilling is unmatched and we are looking to collaborate with local talent to jointly drive digital transformation. Our vision to build the operating system for commerce is closely aligned with the Digital UAE initiative to make the UAE a Smart Country and we are looking forward to empowering stakeholders to achieve this goal.“

says Rahul Garg, CEO and Founder, Moglix

Moglix recently raised its Series E round of funding led by Falcon Edge Capital through their Abu Dhabi based Alpha Wave Ventures, becoming the first B2B Commerce unicorn in the manufacturing sector, with a total funding of $220 Million and a valuation of $ 1 Billion

Moglix has expanded its ESOP pool further by $10 Million to include more than 300 employees under the program. We have also announced an ESOP buyback program worth $3 Million for all eligible employees with vested stocks on the heels of its recent fundraise. Employees will be able to sell up to 25% of their vested shares during the buyback.

“We believe ESOPs represent ownership mindset and belief in the vision. Typically B2B and Manufacturing are not seen as attractive sectors for talent. But through our ESOP program and our work culture, we want to make it rewarding and meaningful to work in B2B. We want to enable long-term wealth creation for employees and recognize their contribution and commitment.”

says Rahul.

One of the early joiners, Pankaj Kumar, who heads engineering and has been with Moglix for five years, shares, “Participating in the ESOP buyback was my “KBC” moment. You don’t imagine the scale of impact ESOPs can make in wealth creation, it can bring multi-generational change in just a few years. I have not encashed most of my ESOPs, as I know that no other investment can give these kinds of returns, and this is the confidence I have in the potential of Moglix.”

Moglix recently entered the unicorn club with the latest fundraising round from Falcon Edge Capital and Harvard Management Company. With end-to-end supply chain operations from sourcing to financing, 30+ warehouses, and a team strength of ~1000 employees, Moglix is Asia’s largest and fastest-growing B2B Commerce company focused on manufacturing and infrastructure

“India operated pretty much without catalogues pre-Moglix. I would take the liberty of saying that Moglix is the catalogue for India.”

This is a powerful statement. But in his 15 years of professional career and six years of entrepreneurial journey, Moglix Founder and CEO Rahul Garg has proved that it can be the most disruptive company in the manufacturing sector globally.

“I started with the goal to bring the same level of convenience, technology, and supply chain efficiency that we see in our consumer world to the B2B world. And that is how we will build the infrastructure and capabilities, which will be required in the next 20 to 50 years for our country to become a manufacturing infrastructure powerhouse across the world,”

says Rahul.

Rahul’s ambition is to see India become a $10 trillion economy over the next 10 years, but that would need a collective effort from the country, he says.

While Moglix is busy strategising its global expansion plans, Rahul emphasis that the dent is far smaller given the size of the sector.

After leaving a trail of death and disaster the second wave of Covid-19 is finally showing signs of abating. This is a golden opportunity for all stakeholders in India’s manufacturing supply chain to act now to delay the third wave.

The only long-term solution to fight Covid is vaccination. Central consolidation of vaccine procurement to the tune of 75%, with a 25% window for private hospitals will resolve several vaccine supply chain challenges. As seen in the case of Operation Warp Speed in the United States, a centrally administered vaccine procurement model will alleviate the bad Nash equilibrium emanating competition among state governments to procure vaccines on their own and foster greater collaboration.

Long-Term Focus: A National Supply Chain Stress Test for Critical Resources

A national supply chain stress test for critical resources may be conducted every financial quarter.

It should consist of three layers of descending priority levels:

• To encompass items covered under the Essential Commodities Act.
• To include the raw materials required by vaccine manufacturers deployed in the COVID19 vaccine.
• To cover materials required in the infrastructure vertical.