Startup Mantra: Rationalising buyer-seller gap in digital-first world

The B2B marketplace is a demand and price discovery-led platform which helps brands and sellers to digitally reach buyers based on their persona

Pune: Started with the idea of connecting offline stores digitally with the brands on a marketplace model in the area of consumer electronic, Equibiz has disrupted the traditional supply chain and way of trading. The B2B marketplace is a demand and price discovery-led platform which helps brands and sellers to digitally reach buyers based on their persona i.e., wholesale model for retailers and bulk model for wholesaler, distributors, etc. Founded by Sunil Kumar, a banking professional with over 20 years of experience, Equibiz also has online bid and offer a model which has helped democratise listing and help in the price discovery of products.

Sunil Kumar (centre) and his Equibiz team. (HT PHOTO)

In the beginning…

A BSc Physics graduate from Magadh University (Bihar), Sunil did his post-graduate diploma in treasury and forex management from the Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts of India (ICFAI) in 2007-08. In a banking career spanning two decades, Sunil has worked in the industry both in public sector and foreign banks. Early in his career, Sunil got an exposure towards the various facets of the general banking, operations, advances, foreign exchange, accounting and agriculture finance. He has handled retail banking operations, cross-sales of third-party products and compliance issues in the personal banking branch.

Sunil said, “I started my entrepreneurial journey in 2018 by setting up a venture in the area of mobility and at the same time laid the foundation of Equibiz. When Covid-19 hit us in early 2020, I realised the need of creating a marketplace for B2B players. There were some existing platforms, but they were not solving the problem of retailers and had no features which would help them in price discovery.

“To ensure retailers have access to variety of quality products at a competitive price by rationalising traditional supply chain, we started Equibiz and brought together all business stakeholders, including dealers, retailers, wholesalers, stockiest, brands, exporters, importers, and others on a single platform to conduct business seamlessly and on transparent terms, mainly in the area of cell phones and consumer electronics items.”

Problem statement

B2B buyers are different than those in the B2C segment in terms of persona, deal conditions, requirements and needs. Sunil said, “In the traditional model, a brand or manufacturer has a stockist, distributor, and retailer in its supply chain. Due to absence of real-time market information and demand aggregation, the brands and sellers are restrained. There is a huge staffing cost involved in for supply chain management coupled with the problem of stuck inventory. Besides, the stakeholders have to deal with lower margins like 3 to 8 per cent in the case of smartphone and 8 to 15 per cent in the case of other categories.”

“To solve these problems, Equibiz identified the retailer/dealer as a ‘wholesale’ segment and distributor/wholesaler as the ‘bulk’ segment. Equibiz enables brands or sellers to deal with multiple buyers based on personas like wholesale and bulk with real-time price and product discovery. These B2B participants have access to the higher distributable margin of up to 2 to 6 per cent by reducing the long chain of distribution and reduced higher staffing costs due to our one-stop digital solution for the supply chain and automation of manual work. We also brought the feature of bid and offer to offload stuck inventory,” he said.

Invest less in supply chain

According to Sunil, Equibiz platform is encouraging e-commerce-focused brands to invest less in the supply chain, leading to a positive impact on the profitability of buyers and sellers with a distributable margin of 1 to 3 per cent in cell phones and 2 to 8 per cent in other product categories.

He said, “Our objective is to provide a single platform for the brand, resellers (wholesalers, distributors, retailers, etc.), private-level players, and other stakeholders to generate profitable trade leading to high turnover at a lower margin over the platform. Features like bid and offer, market buzz, etc., will help sellers discover real-time demand and price of products which transforms the deal-making process and incentivise an offline business to convert online. Furthermore, our interface provides a seamless transaction booking experience along with the customer-dedicated service provider, Dukan Dost, to instantly solve queries for higher customer satisfaction.”

Trade Facilitator

After identifying the pain points in B2B ecommerce supply chain, Sunil designed Equibiz to work as a trade facilitator for stakeholders.

“With special focus on SMEs (small and medium enterprises), we are providing access to a just and fair marketplace to many small businesses through a seller supplier panel which enables them to sell products across geography. The market buzz panel is a facility for buyers to bid online against all listed and unlisted products and negotiate by way of receiving the counter offer from the seller. It ensures that the deals are executed of the selected product at the best price.

“We are incentivising unorganised player to become organised leading to the expansion of the market size and volume. We are one of the platforms where sellers and buyers can negotiate online without anybody’s intervention. The fair and transparent pricing over our platform will help merchant exporters and importers to purchase and sell and the industry to grow,” Sunil said.

“We are making the long chain of distribution a short one. Products are being listed at a good price point. Single listing can serve bulk, wholesale, and bid and offer segments with buyers getting visibility of both listings in a single view. This feature ensures that brands or seller and buyers are engaged on our platform,” he said. The user experience is enhanced with artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled dashboard and value-added features for greater user engagement and real-time information. It facillates increased business for stakeholders by enabling a large liquidity pool of products from a variety of suppliers at a fixed and negotiated rate,” he said.

Tapping retail potential

The low-cost digital distribution model is designed to help small and medium retailers to have access to variety of products at reasonable price to improve their return on investment (ROI). In order to tap the huge retail potential, B2B participants are accessing Equibiz digital interface to better their business.

Roadmap ahead

Sunil said, “We are expanding into other product categories such as tablets, laptops, smart wearables, IT, and IT accessories, etc. We are also introducing new features such as GEO Tagging, WhatsApp connect, Dukan Dost, integrated e-invoicing and waybill, supplier management panel, brand store, etc.

“In terms of expanding userbase, we are aiming for 10,000+ buyers and 500+ brands/sellers over the platform by next year. We are also introducing new product categories such as personal grooming, medical devices, home and office security devices, innovative products, other items in consumer electronics, etc. AI-based personalised experience linked to customer persona, voice search, etc and promotion of upcoming brands (both domestic and overseas brands) interested in expanding their footprints in India, in the area of smartphone and consumer electronics segments is also in consideration.”

On long-term plans, he said, “We will expand into group buying, multi-brand experience centres, EB retailer connect (facilitating retailer to manage the business), inventory and warehouse management, warehousing, etc. We expect to expand market reach to more than 0.1 million buyers spreading across six states and try to create a marketplace for OEM (original equipment manufacturer), brands, and suppliers.”