Infra.Market: The Amazon of Infrastructure
“You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”
Don’t construction projects take a reaaaally long time to finish?
Be it a road on your daily commute or a building near your house: You feel as if the construction has been going on forever! It is easy to get annoyed at the delays in these projects. But have you ever wondered what causes these delays?
Supply chain issues.
The construction industry in India has been plagued by problems like late deliveries which make sourcing construction-related raw materials very difficult.
And where there’s a problem, there’s a startup trying to solve it. Infra.Market is one such startup, trying to shake things up in the construction materials space.
But what exactly is Infra.Market doing?
ReadOn!
The Need For Infra.Market
In 2016, two former classmates Aaditya Sharda and Souvik Sengupta decided to collaborate and build their passion project. What prompted a CA and a share-market enthusiast to create this platform?
Sharda had worked in construction and knew the industry's problems firsthand. The duo realised that many small companies and manufacturers who are involved in construction often face massive difficulties in the procurement of raw materials. Why?
Because different raw materials have to be sourced from different parts of India. They need to be delivered over state lines, which increases their costs and causes delays in deliveries.
This can completely derail the budget of a project, which can be fatal for a small company with limited resources.
Also, the bigger players in the market, who have surplus capital, often win bids for big construction projects. They then use contractors and small manufacturers to do the job for them. Seems unfair, no? That's exactly what Infra.Market founders also thought.
They recognised that unlike the rest of the world, the construction and infrastructure industry in India was still in the dark ages. The industry, which would be worth Rs. 50 trillion by 2022, had not yet leveraged technology to its advantage. And by adding this element of technology to the construction supply chain, they could make sourcing materials faster, cheaper, and more efficient!
We've all heard of Fintech and Insurtech, but Infra.Market brought in the age of construction-tech (con-tech). They created a B2B platform that makes it easier for small manufacturers to source products at reasonable prices and track deliveries. It is just like Amazon or Flipkart, but for construction supplies! So much so that they have helped their customers save 5%-7% on their input costs.
Infra.Market's Retail Play
Infra.Market’s revolutionary idea to disrupt the construction space had worked, and how! In three years, the company scaled its business from Rs. 12 crores to Rs. 60 crores.
Despite their hard work and success, Infra.Market could not get any investors interested for the longest time. Many investors did not realise how their idea was unique and simply saw them as suppliers of cement and other raw materials. But, as they say, patience pays! After Accel recognised its unique potential in 2019, there was no looking back for the firm. They soon secured funding from investors like Foundamental, Nexus, and Tiger Global.
And then the year 2020 rolled in and disaster struck. The pandemic brought a standstill to construction projects and their business halved.
But, as Sharda put it himself, he had a "dhandha wala dimaag" (a business bent of mind). So, the company soon overcame this adversity as well. How? By adding a retail aspect to their B2B business.
You see, the company started out with solving the problem of big v/s small - just like Amazon - but now it looks like it is taking over the role that larger companies played.
Infra.Market has become a brand in the construction space. Leveraging this, they tied up with struggling small manufacturers during the pandemic. They then sold these orders to large companies. This helped them survive the pandemic while helping the smaller companies working with them.
Infra.Market currently has over 620 dealer-owned and operated stores across 50 cities and plans to have around 2,000 such stores by 2022.
So, like Amazon, it not only provides a marketplace for construction goods but also has its own brand of goods, which currently makes up about 75% of its business.
The company is now a globally recognised Contech firm, with revenue growing almost 100x from ₹12.54 crores in FY17 to ₹1,200 crores in FY20 and FY21!
One of the major reasons for Infra.Market's success was that when it launched it was offering a product that nobody else in the market was. There were several other companies like Moglix, IndustryBuying, Power2SME that were operating in the same space, but none offered the one-stop solution that Infra.Market did. And it is this uniqueness and convenience for which customers kept returning to Infra.Market.
All in all, it looks like Infra.Market has been able to shake up the infrastructure and construction space. But, is it good for the ecosystem as a whole? Food for thought.
Until next time, ReadOn.
Share this with your friends on WhatsApp and Twitter :)
If you are coming here for the very first time: Don’t forget to join us on WhatsApp to get daily updates! 👇