[Funding alert] Japan's MonotaRO invests $15M in JV with Industrybuying.com

MonotaRO Co Ltd, Japan’s largest MRO B2B ecommerce company, on Friday said it has invested $15 million (about Rs 110.5 crore) in a joint venture with Emtex Engineering to grow the latter's SME (small and medium enterprises) ecommerce business in India.

Emtex Engineering operates Industrybuying.com. It has two businesses — SME ecommerce and large enterprise.

MonotaRO will own 51.6 percent stake in the JV, IB monotaRO Pvt Ltd, while the rest will be held by Emtex Engineering Pvt Ltd.

"As part of the deal, Emtex has transferred its SME business into the JV, and continues to grow its large enterprise businesses independently," a statement said.

Industrybuying.com now has access to MonotaRO's know-how, product portfolio, supplier network, and ecommerce expertise to develop a market leadership position in India.

MonotaRO gets entry into the large and emerging India B2B ecommerce market via a well established, profitable platform, the statement added.

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"Through this JV, the company expects to efficiently develop its business in the Indian market, which is expected to grow significantly in the future, by utilising the ecommerce business model that Emtex has already established in India (industrybuying.com), and based upon the knowledge that the company has obtained through developing businesses in Japan and other countries around the world," commented MonotaRO.

"MonotaRO's deep ecommerce expertise and catalogue of over 10 million products can propel India business to a highly profitable, IPOable growth trajectory in a very short time. So, we are excited to be partnering with them in this phase of our growth," Industrybuying.com CEO Swati Gupta said.

Parallelly, the company will continue to grow its large enterprise and other businesses independently and profitably, she added.

MonotaRO Co. Ltd., with a market capitalisation of $12 billion, was up nine percent on the Tokyo Stock Exchange since September 23 2020. 

(Disclaimer: Additional background information has been added to this PTI copy for context)