The rise of the B2B start-up

More Indians are donning and expecting the entrepreneurial hat to solve the problems plaguing businesses. A study shows the number of B2B start-ups more than trebled to 3,200 in 2018 from 900 five years back. Funding to such firms zoomed by 364 percent to 3.7 billion dollar. At least five B2B ventures – including Bill Desk and Delivery-became unicorns while five more, such as Rivigo and Lendingkart, are closing in on the 1-billion dollar mark. Nearly 43 percent of tech start-ups are B2B focussed compared to 29 percent in 2014, and their count is growing faster than that of consumer ventures.

Centre of gravity has shifted to B2B tech start-ups in India mainly on account of following reasons :- 1) Availability of talent with requisite domain expertise 2) Enterprises in India with push for digital innovation are open for PoCs with start-ups 3) Most of these start-ups have holdcos overseas where product pricing is commensurate and IPs are also protected 4) As a result of (3) above, these start-ups are targeting global markets with product development & engineering in India 5) These start-ups are capital efficient & do not require large amount of capital to scale 6) They develop their niche & co-exist with competitors unlike 'winner takes all the market' syndrome in B2C.

Many start-ups like MakeMyTrip, Flipkart, Ola (ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd), OYO, Cleartrip.com, Naukri.com, Paytm, Practo, Zomato, BookMyShow, Swiggy, Quikr, etc., have already demonstrated it.