IndiaMartвЂ™s business model faces a two-front war. First, letвЂ™s take a peek at the companyвЂ™s main rivals. We will come to IndiaMartвЂ™s strategy in a bit. We expect a multi-year hyper growth in high double-digit percentage in the sector over the next five years,' says Amit Sharma, general partner at Cactus Venture Partners, a venture capital firm. Nevertheless, ecommerce occupies only a fraction of the overall B2B market. вЂњB2B e-commerce has done exceptionally well over the last couple of years owing to the pandemic. According to Tracxn, a data site tracking deals, Indian B2B firms saw $2 billion in venture funding in 2021 alone.

While the going seems good, investors appear to be pondering over a crucial question: can IndiaMart stave off growing competition? After all, many of the startups it is up against are well-funded. In the nine months ended December 2021, net profits climbed 7% to в‚№240 crore from the year-ago period.

Last year, its net profit grew by over 90%. Even as the Indian economy faced many headwinds, the company grew 22% (CAGR) since 2015-16 to generate revenues of в‚№670 crore in 2020-21. Moreover, in a country where generating revenue from the internet through paid subscriptions has been difficult, IndiaMart is almost unique in that 95% of its revenues come from subscriptions paid upfront. In just the last two years, it added another 30 million. It took the firm 25 years to gain 60 million visitors per month. The pandemic has now turbo charged the traffic. That is about 10% of IndiaвЂ™s internet audience. The company claims 90 million monthly visits (on the desktop website, mobile website and mobile app). Everything from industrial machinery and building material to laboratory instruments and kitchen containers. Founded in 1999, it is one of IndiaвЂ™s largest and oldest online B2B marketplace that lists 72 million products from across 97,000 categories. Nevertheless, the market maker here is an old warrior-Dinesh Agrawal, the founder and CEO of IndiaMart InterMesh Ltd. The pie, according to some estimates, is pegged at over $1 trillion by 2024. Not just IndiaMart, this is a battleground where both established multinationals and very young startups are all eyeing a piece of the action. For, in IndiaвЂ™s business to business (B2B) ecommerce ecosystem, there is a turf war raging. Unknown to Karmakar, he, and other small businesses, are the cynosure of many eyes. With industrial demand picking up this year, he is planning to increase his advertisement spending on IndiaMart. Karmakar tried out online marketing solutions from other companies as well-some of which he found to be complicated.

Company ad wars