Rahul Garg speaks on building for industrial India with B2B marketplace Moglix
We continue with our discussion on building for India in the #InsightsPodcastSeries and in this episode, focus on building an ecommerce company for Industrial India.
To talk about this topic, we have Rahul, Co-founder of Moglix, a B2B marketplace for MRO (Maintenance, Repair, and Operating Supplies). Before starting Moglix, Rahul has held various leadership positions at Google in Asia Pacific and is a graduate of ISB and IIT Kanpur.
On this podcast, we discuss building a B2B marketplace for the Indian Industry:
- Choosing the problem — How do you think about the problem to go after? How do you evaluate B2B market opportunities?
- Importance of market size and, conversely especially in large markets, figuring out what is the value proposition and the market-segment you can address with this value proposition
- The chicken and egg problem — what comes first in a marketplace — solving for what comes first on your platform — identifying the size of buyers and sellers and determining the build-out of your marketplace
- Contrasting between B2B and B2C — buying behaviour and differences in customers
- The difference in the decision-making process of B2B and B2C customers and ticket size changes and the way the product must be built out
- Cash flow — B2B runs on credit while a B2C is on cash being paid upfront; rethink cash cycles for your business
- Winning in the space — How Moglix is building a well-loved and resilient business
- Building a tech-first marketplace to handle scale in the future
- Surviving the initial few years and emerging as a leader in the space
- Hiring the right talent for the team, and hiring for B2B
- B2B businesses are not glamorous — finding the right talent means finding people with a passion for the business and the problem you are trying to solve
- Hire a diverse group of people who bring complementary skill sets to your team — juggle responsibilities till you find the right hire for the role
In the next few podcasts, we will dive deeper into startups in the Indian Business Sector.
Also read: Living the experience with Myntra’s Mukesh Bansal
Anand Daniel is a seed/early stage venture investor with Accel Partners.
(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory.)
