At the TiECon in Mumbai on Tuesday at the Tata Theatre at the NCPA, Ranu Vohra, MD of Avendus Capital had a fireside chat with Sujeet Kumar, Co-founder of Udaan. The session between the two IIT Delhi men who studied 10 years apart explored India and the B2B story.
Kumar who worked at Flipkart shared how he did not know anything about starting a business as he came from a small town in Bihar. He told Vohra, “I tried for almost a year to get through the UPSC exam. It was what my parents wanted. In 2005, startup was not so popular. KPOs and BPOs were big – you joined a project and got money.”
Sachin Bansal who was Kumar’s junior by a year and stayed in the hostel asked him to join Flipkart. “I went to Bangalore from Delhi and saw that they started an e-commerce company. I decided to stay and work with Sachin and Binny,” he shared.
Challenge
Starting a new company with his co-founders Vaibhav Gupta and Amod Malviya in the uncharted B2B space was a huge challenge for all. “We started our journey together and the investment started coming in, we started seeing growth, capital looking more real. The model had great potential. We had to solve the B2B problem from the supply chain angle. Internet penetration was not there, so goods dealers were not using the internet. But data now has gone to the village level, with people using WhatsApp. The timing worked for us,” he said.
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Sachin Bansal who was Kumar’s junior by a year and stayed in the hostel asked him to join Flipkart.
Shedding light on the fundamental difference between B2B and B2C, Kumar said, “I realised that there are two kinds of growth when you concentrate on pricing. The internet, consuming things – pricing affects behaviour in B2Cs. In B2Bs, it is about supply chain, how to handle cash, solving catalogue problems, training.”
Overcoming
The Udaan co-founder explained how he and his other co-founders set the stage for the Bengaluru-based B2B e-commerce platform to grow. “In 2016, for the first six months – we just analysed the market. Went on the ground, spoke to retailers, suppliers and tried to understand their roles. We launched our beta in November 2016 after all the research. For seven months – it was used by all our retailers, manufacturers and then a year later in 2017, we started our company,” he said with a big smile.
The company today has grown to almost 27,000 people; Kumar shared which was applauded by the audience. This includes many who are not on Udaan’s payroll but are still employed by the company.
India Inc Gets Budget-Ready; Ronnie Screwvala, Cleartrip Boss, Spykar Lifestyle CEO Share W...
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The Countdown Begins
It's that time of the year when all eyes are on the Finance Minister. Dalal Street, India Inc, tax-paying individuals, consumers, traders - almost everyone is looking at Nirmala Sitharaman with hope. This Budget, that comes in the wake of a slowdown, and muted consumer spending, is the first one that's being presented by the Narendra Modi government after storming back to power in the Lok Sabha elections last year.
As the countdown begins, here's a look at what India Inc has on their wishlist from Ms Sitharaman this time.
Ronnie Screwvala, Chairman & Co-founder, upGrad
This Budget has to herald the clear road map towards $5 trillion & 3rd largest economy in the world or else we are out of time. The Budget in India always needs to have a strong balance of populist and development of rural India but this time it needs to focus on the other half that can propel India. It is going to be about taking very hard calls.
Three initiatives (amongst many others) in the Budget that can really move the needle are: First, a clear plan for the Government to be out of the business of things, privatisation of most sectors has to get to 10x of present plan. This would lead to massive monetisation for the exchequer but also bring about massive efficiency into large sectors. The Government needs to think big and therefore look to privatise and exit profit-making businesses too and not just the loss-making ones. A one-time movement on this can change the pace and scale of the economy and hurtle us towards $5 trillion goal.
Secondly, one sector that would move the needle for GDP amongst all others - it would be for us to make a blueprint to take tourism to 10x of its present levels in the next 5 years. It can be the largest employer for the country, bring in more foreign exchange than the 35 million migrant Indians repatriating money back home and can be a game changer for India’s perception in the world. The blueprint has to be a big one from infrastructure that allows private sector to create best places to stay and travel. We already have the best sites in the world but, alas, they are poorly maintained and even more poorly marketed.
Lastly, we need to be the entrepreneurial capital of the world in the 2020 decade: a clear goal where we need to simplify doing business, making, starting and running a corporate in India easier than anywhere in the world. We cannot celebrate improving 20 positions of ranking in the ease of doing business and get to 100th! Need to move straight to the top 10 nations where it’s easy to do business. Need to open up all sectors with a stop to the constant regulatory changes that makes it most difficult to build anything of scale in India for any entrepreneur. If we can create half a million entrepreneurs a year that creates 10 new jobs each, no one can stop India’s path to be in the top three economies of the world.
As I said, it’s time to take hard calls.
Indroneel Dutt, CFO, Cleartrip
Since the past decade, India has established itself as one of the fastest-growing travel markets across the globe. We, as a nation, are poised to become the third-largest market by 2025 given the secular growth trends. It is essential to ensure that infrastructural inadequacies do not fetter the growth of the industry. The government should make provisions for boosting the domestic infrastructure towards global benchmarks in the upcoming Budget.
We are also hopeful that the Government will take cognisance and resolve challenges for the aviation industry which has already seen a tough year in 2019. For one, out of all the stakeholders in the aviation ecosystem, airlines operate with the most paper-thin margins. This, coupled with TCS (Tax collection at source), ends up hampering the working capital of airlines, giving rise to numerous operational difficulties. These obstacles are not only affecting the stakeholders and service providers, but the consumers as well. We are optimistic that the Government will continue to be open-minded and maintain the impetus of its past initiatives while bringing necessary reformations to further enable the travel sector.
Sanjay Vakharia, CEO, Spykar Lifestyle
The clothing and lifestyle industry thrives on sentiments and the same are at its lowest as we speak. We expect in all earnest that the Government will make certain announcements in the Budget which can spur demand by placing more disposable income in the hands of the consumers. Our economy has a large consumer base and once the momentum is built, there should be no stopping us.
Rahul Agarwal, CEO, Organic Harvest
The current rate of 5% at which the Indian economy is reeling is a major concern. The two engines for growth of the economy are consumption and investment. I believe the thrust of the Government should be directed towards the revival of these two pillars - consumption and investment - in capital projects. Improvement in sentiments and kick-starting the private capex will help in making India a favourable investment destination.
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