Inside IndiaMART’s Rs 905 crore shopping spree

Noida-based B2B marketplace IndiaMART has invested in over a dozen startups since it went public. Here’s a deep dive at what the company looks for in a startup.

Monday March 21, 2022 , 2 min Read

Hello Readers,

B2B (business-to-business) marketplace IndiaMART made a strong debut on the bourses three years ago when its Rs 475 crore IPO was oversubscribed over 36 times. Last year, the company raised about Rs 1,070 crore from qualified institutional buyers.

With its cash reserves full, the company started looking at expansion.

But acquisitions are a different ball game altogether — especially for a company with a network of over 143 million buyers and 7 million+ store fronts, facilitating buy-sell transactions spanning over 97,000 different categories.

Between February and November 2021, “We met about over 200-300 companies, explored various sectors,” Dinesh Agarwal, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of IndiaMart, tells YourStory.

Since April 2021, it has spent over Rs 905 crore across 13 deals. In the last five months, it has bought stakes in nine tech startups including Zimyo, Realbooks, IMPL, FleetX, Busy Infotech, Simply Vyapar, Legistify, EasyEcom, and M1xchange — across accounting, logistics, etc.

These investments fall in line with IndiaMART’s long term vision of providing a holistic ecosystem for all business needs.

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