UDAAN Has Emerged Biggest Disruptor in B2B Segment in India

Udaan, a B2B e-commerce firm has created a vibrant name in the Corporate world and the business model is quiet impressive. In a short span of time achieved the valuation of a billion USD or more.

Promoters are all from ex-Flipkart and they are Vaibhav Gupta is Founder of UDAAN. He was previously a business finance chief with Flipkart. Sujeet Kumar is the another Founder of UDAAN. He served as President of Operations at Flipkart Online Services and third founder is Amod Malviya ,he has worked as the Advisor of Flipkart Online Services, since October 2015.

Incepted in 2016, the company became the fastest Unicorn in September this year after raising $225 million led by DST Global and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Started as a logistic platform for buyers and sellers in staple (rice, lentils etc.), electronic and apparels. The company focused only on logistics part for about 8-10 months, with this exercise they have gained significant exposure within the community.

During these days, the company have created a very well build database of buyer and sellers before getting into supply business. Within a short span of operations, it has been able to onboard about 2,00,000 sellers and buyers on the platform. Out of the 80 percent of partners are the buyers comprising of small-scale retailers, remaining 20 per cent are manufacturers who are selling inventories on Udaan’s platform.

Udaan is also working with manufacturers in about 130 cities and delivering to buyers across 1,000 cities. “Large catalogue coupled with efficient and cheap logistics have made Udaan popular amongst buyers in smaller cities. Besides adding sellers from India, Udaan also has started sourcing manufacturers from China.

By making a commission on transactions and charging for logistics. Sources said, Udaan helps in getting the most cheapest product in small or larger volume to the other Resellers across the geography through their sales representatives, with this Udaan is gunning a bigger opportunity.

Very soon Udaan is eyeing to become a lending platform for merchants who are buying at it. Financing working capital has been a major headache for end retailers. They typically end up borrowing from local lenders who charge exorbitantly. Udaan intends to be a working capital ‘fund’ for them.

“With the combination of a marketplace, logistics, and lending, it turns out that Udaan has been building full stack platform for SMEs. And if it executes well, there is big winning to take home. Another sources says, it has created a big confusion in the IT and Telecom corporate world in terms of publicly offering incentives and promotional schemes to the resellers community for clearing the inventory and stock. Industry sources says, it is the biggest disruptor in the B2B industry and there is no law to stop this type of activity in the country. However, the new law is coming for the FDI to enter the retail sector. There are other similar players including MOGLIX and Excess2sell are two other plyers in this B2B segment.

With an aggressive expansion plan and full stack approach, if Udaan continues to evolve the confidence of one-stop option for SMEs and resellers by making the right balance with the corporate world, then the sky is not the limit of the growth.