WATCH: how these brothers left their family business to build a successful B2B online marketplace
Bengaluru-based ShakeDeal, founded by Akshay and Akash Hegde, is a B2B ecommerce platform that solves problems in procurement and distribution space.
Brothers Akshay and Akash Hegde, while working on their family business, saw multiple pain points while in the market. These included procurement issues like sub-optimal pricing, delivery service levels, and streamlined supply that posed production challenges.
At the same time, while trying to grow the market for their goods, the duo saw an opportunity to bring down the cost of distribution while driving volumes, realising higher margins and improving the cash cycles.
Hence, in 2016, the duo came up with the idea of ShakeDeal – a B2B ecommerce platform that solves problems in the procurement and distribution space. Soon, the brothers were joined by their friend Santhosh Reddy as a Co-founder.
In this video interview with YourStory, the co-founders of ShakeDeal talk about the secret sauce of their startup.
Co-founder Akash says,
“We have a proprietary procurement and negotiation tool that ensures and guarantees savings while sourcing. ShakeDeal is client-centric to the core. Though we use an asset (inventory) light model unlike other players in our space, we streamline our supply chain and develop partners to bring out the shortest turnaround times and best service levels during fulfilment.”
He adds, “Being asset light, we are also able to take an unbiased approach while evaluating and recommending industrial supplies to our clients. This makes us very transparent and adaptive to changes in market conditions such as stock availability, short supply, and obsolete catalogues.”
Bengaluru-based ShakeDeal’s B2B products have solutions for large and medium enterprises across industrial sectors, as well as for brand-to-reseller markets. It has a solution-driven approach and is acquiring customers in any given market. By focusing on what a customer’s pain points are, the startup claims to provide unique, case-wise value adds that differentiates it when it comes to traditional B2B acquisition strategies.
The Co-founders of ShakeDeal
Its B2B commerce marketplace shakedeal.com caters to all business supply requirements of MSMEs. ShakeDeal claims to work with over 1,500 vendors from across the country and charges them a margin percentage after a successful sale. The marketplace uses a combination of drop-shipping and just-in-time (JIT) fulfilment models while catering to indirect procurement spends of businesses across their requirements in maintenance, repair and rehaul (MRO), office supplies, and corporate gifting verticals.
“We currently cater to almost 4,000 SMEs on a monthly basis. Our aim is to cater to 10,000 such businesses by the end of the year, and we are well-poised to achieve that,” explains Akash.
ShakeDeal also has two SaaS-based services - ShakeDeal Enterprise Portal and ShakeDeal B2B Sales Platform.
ShakeDeal Enterprise Portal is for streamlining and simplifying the procure-to-pay functions of larger companies. Here, the startup offers negotiated custom pricing and catalogues, spend analytics, and assisted procurement, among other features.
ShakeDeal B2B Sales Platform is a recently launched ecommerce offering that brings brands and manufacturers closer to their distributors and customers. It’s a powerful, easy-to-use application for B2B customers to place orders anytime and anywhere. Thanks to this tool, a brand’s B2B customers will have access to transparent tiered prices, discounts and promotions, an image-rich digital catalogue, and inventory availability.
The founders claim that the company is growing at a phenomenal pace with 500 percent year-on-year growth.
At the beginning of FY 2018-19, the startup received an undisclosed investment from US-based private equity firm Vora Ventures. The funding was also an acquisition where the terms were undisclosed. The founders did not disclose any of the acquisition details.
According to IBEF, the turnover of the capital goods industry in India was estimated at $70 billion in 2017, and is expected to grow to $115.17 billion by 2025. ShakeDeal currently competes with companies like Moglix and Industrybuying.
