Infra.Market is an India-based technology startup company trying to change the way construction and real estate companies procure material for their projects. While ushering in the next normal in construction, it is trying to reshape the world?? largest ecosystem through technology ??every process and every product. A 300+ strong team, headquartered in Mumbai/Thane with centres across India having regional offices in Noida, Gurugram, Delhi, Kochi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, and Nashik supports the company.
Founded by Souvik Sengupta and Aaditya Sharda in 2016 supported by venture capital fund Tiger Global, Infra.Market is an online procurement marketplace that leverages technology to provide an enhanced procurement experience for all players in the construction ecosystem. The company focuses on high-volume construction products under its own brands and aims to solve existing issues such as the lack of price transparency, unreliable quality, a fragmented vendor base, and inefficient logistics.
It calls itself as an enabler or an aggregator to the sector, it has emerged as one of the most disruptive companies through pioneering technological innovation in the procurement and distribution of building materials catering to the infrastructure and construction industry by improving logistics, financing, procurement and project management of large scale projects in key markets across India,??added Rohit Batra, Partner, Evolvence India.
Infra.Market is working across 10 states in India right now and is looking to expand further into Tier-II cities within these states. It caters to both institutional customers (B2B) and retail outlets (D2R) in the construction material sector. Almost 10 percent of the revenues of the startup are currently generated from its international operations. It currently exports to countries such as Dubai, Singapore, Malaysia etc, and will use a portion of the current funds to enhance its international operations.
Advantage
Infra market claims to aggregate demand to offer economies of scale on material pricing not previously available to individual customers and projects. As a part of end-to-end building services, it offers material directly to customers in unprecedented time and cost. It decodes the client’s complete material project requirements and ensure delivery in the right time, quantity and mix ensuring just in time delivery and reducing unnecessary inventory carrying costs while ensuring no delay due to non-availability.
Technology platform
It uses sophisticated technology platform that connects client requirements directly to the supply chain infrastructure for ease of ordering, tracking and manufacturing till on site delivery.
Advancement in technology enables deep integration and newfound efficiencies between design, supply chain and onsite assembly, making the Infra.Market model possible. The clients get timely updates of at every stage of order fulfillment from the point of order to the point of delivery at site. Our customers can always access the best price and get access to historical purchase data and predicted price fluctuations in near future as predicted by Industry Experts.
The company claims to invest heavily in research and development to bring the best of enterprise technology to construction. The new funds it is borrowing will enable the Mumbai-based company to seed newer markets and advance its integration initiatives such as private labels and direct-to-retail channels. The company has taken a baby step to create its own labels and own product range wherever possible. It is putting efforts to have its exclusive Shoppe concept to push the brand. There are few unanswered questions like when company talks about quality, how it will ensure quality without any resource. Depending on the quality certificate of the manufacturer is an easy escape route. Another question is cement being a commodity
Future
Today the business model adopted by the company appears to be successful but the dealer community at large is very watchful about the progress since the company has deep pockets. It will be interesting to wait and watch how the company shapes up in the next five years.