Building a home and want to buy construction materials yourself? You can now do that online. A slew of entrepreneurs have set up ventures to tap into the $150 billion opportunity in the construction materials space.
Buildzar.com, Supplified.com, eConstructionmart.com, mSupply.com, Buildkar.com and Materialtree.com are helping both builders and individual home owners procure construction materials such as cement, steel, bricks, pre-mixed concrete, safety equipment, tiles, paints among many others online from small, unorganised and scattered vendors. Even Snapdeal offers building and allied materials on its website. While Supplified.com and Buildzar.com are active in the Delhi NCR market, mSupply.com, Buildkar.com and Materialtree.com are active in the Bengaluru market. In January, Gurgaon based B2C marketplace Buildzar.com raised $4 million from Puneet Dalmia of Dalmia Bharat Limited in pre-series "This is a city specific model," said Sreedhar Prasad, partner, e-commerce and startups, KPMG in India, adding, "But can be replicated to other cities by tapping into local vendors."
The construction material market in India is estimated to be roughly around $150 billion, comprising mostly unorganised small retailers and potential customers like contractors, architects, individual buyers, and developers. These online marketplaces tie up with local retailers and standardise prices for products. All the transactions are prepaid in nature with minimum orders for free shipping.