1

G.L. BAJAJ
INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT
(Approved by AICTE & Affiliated to Abdul Kalam Technical University Plot
No.2, Knowledge park 3,Greater Noida)

SUMMER INTERNSHIP PROJECT REPORT

ON

STUDY ON INDIVIDUAL FINANCIAL PLANNING

UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF- SUBMITTED BY-

Neha Gupta Vishnoi Vaibhav Bhatt

(HR Manager at HBF NIDHI LTD) Batch 2017-2019
1719270056
Abhishek Goel
(Certified Financial Planner)

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G.L. Bajaj Institute of Management and Research

Greater Noida

CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that Mr. NISHCHAY TIWARI is a bonafide student of this

institute (MBA Batch 2017-2019),has undertaken this project work entitled “ A
Study On Individual Financial Planning” as part of his summer training for the
partial fullfillment of the award of Master Of Business Administration degree
from Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam Technical University ,Lucknow ( U.P).

As per best of my knowledge this project work is an original piece of work and
has not been submitted or published elsewhere.

I wish him all the best for his bright future ahead.

(Dr. Deepa Gupta)

( Head - MBA)

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DECLARATION

I declare that this project report entitled “A Study On Individual Financial

Planning” is original and bonafide work of my own in the partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the award of the Degree of Master Of Business
Administration and submitted to the Department of Management, G.L. Bajaj
Institute of Management and Research, Greater Noida.

The data that has been collected by me is truly authentic and contains true and
complete information.

Date:-

NISHCHAY TIWARI

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

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CONTENT

PG. NO.
CERTIFICATE 02
DECLARATION 03
ACKHNOWLEDGMENT 04
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 05
__________________________________________________________
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ……………………………………… 08

CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ……………………… 55

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS & LEARNING……………………………….58

CHAPTER 4: INTERNSHIP PROFILE ……………………………….. 84

CHAPTER 5: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ……………………….. 85

CHAPTER 6: OUTCOME OF THE TASK PERFORMED ………….. 90

CHAPTER 7: FINDINGS AND LEARNINGS ………………………….92

CHAPTER 8: RECOMMENDATIONS …………………………………..98

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CHAPTER-1

Introduction

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Company Profile

Dinesh Agarwal, the founder and CEO of IndiaMART was pondering over a

presentation that he had to make to his board of directors the next day. While

discussing about this with his co-founder, Brijesh Agrawal, he realized that the year

2013-14 had been good for the company, but there were many challenges they needed

to face as they embarked into 2014-15. He pulled out a sheet of paper, and began

listing them. First on their mind was the speed of customer acquisition. Their earlier

attempts at increasing the speed of customer acquisition had only been partially

successful, and it was extremely important that this time it had to be bang on target.

Second, there was a need to improve the customer churn rate from the current levels

of 26% to 20% in the next one year. Third, they realized the opportunity being created

by increasing levels of mobile penetration. It was important that IndiaMARTrespond to

the opportunity strategically. Numerous challenges confronted the firm as their clients

began using the mobile phone as the primary mode of connecting/ transacting on the

Internet. Fourth, many new marketplaces were opening up in the Indian SME space.

For instance, internet based wholesalers like Shopclues1 and electronic retail stores of

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established consumer retail brands were opening up the space for highly differentiated

competition. Huge investments were flowing towards B2C businesses

(Flipkart, Snap deal, Mantra, etc.) In addition, Amazon had announced its intention of

setting up an online B2B business in India. Dinesh wondered if IndiaMART should

enter new marketplaces, which ones (if yes), and what new capabilities (like logistics,

warehousing, and fulfillment) were required to succeed in those new marketplaces.

With ambitious targets of: -

(I) generating 10 million buying enquiries every month.

(ii) Expanding customer base with over 100,000 paying customers.

(iii) Generating an ARPU (average revenue per user) of USD 1000.

(iv)Securing 33% EBITDA margins, IndiaMART looked to turbocharge the SME

sourcing market in India.

There were many questions to answer before Dinesh prepared his presentation for the

annual board meeting. As the sun settled across the Noida Expressway (on whose

side-lanes IndiaMART corporate office was located), Dinesh realized he had a long

evening ahead of him.

About IndiaMART

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Indiamart was India’s largest online B2B marketplace, which helped buyer’s source

products and services from small and medium enterprises (SME). It provided a “360-

degree solution” to the SMEs including listing, storefront creation, certification (Trust

SEAL), and access to buyers’ needs (Buy leads – which marked the world’s first such

system of easy sourcing of products).

As on March 2014, IndiaMART had helped over 1.4 million businesses market their

products online with 10 million users using the platform every month.IndiaMART was

also making significant investments to leverage the growth of mobile internet

penetration in India, by offering location-specific search, and user profile-based

personalization, for the smartphone users.

The Economic Landscape Back in 1996

The economic reforms initiated by the Government of India in 1991 had started yielding

results and the telecom story had just started.

Impact of globalization at the turn of the century had created a demand for goods from

India in the western world, and consequently, exports from India started growing at a

rapid pace. Internet too made its entry in India, though coupled together with the high

cost of PC at that time, it was mostly expensive, and unreliable as well. The initial

penetration was also very low. On the other side, Internet had become quite popular in

the western countries by then.

SMEs in India

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The small and medium enterprise (SME) sector in India had started growing at an

exponential rate and had the potential to become one of the primary drivers of the

Indian economy. India had the second largest number of SMEs in the world (48 million)

in 2012; China superseded India with an additional 2 million2. The market of this sector

was worth $5billion at that time, with approximately 8000 products from 11 million units.

1.3 million SMEs accounted for 40% of India’s total exports in the same year.

The sector also employed approximately 8.11 crore people - 40% of India’s workforce,

and contributed 17% to India’s GDP. The space was largely dominated by micro scale

businesses, contributing 95% of the landscape, followed by small-scale businesses

with 4.8% and the rest by medium scale businesses. 55% of these SMEs were located

in urban areas while the rest were in rural regions3.

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Export marketing was an expensive proposition - it was difficult and slow. Also, there

were limited options available to SMEs for promoting their businesses at Global Level.

Moreover, the cost of attending tradeshows in Europe or the US was so exorbitant that

only large corporations could afford to attend. With the evolution of Internet,

international buyers increasingly began looking to know more about their suppliers

through the websites, though ordering and transactions were still offline.

Transforming from the pen & paper tradition, Indian SMEs were increasingly adopting

technology for the betterment of their businesses, with increased investments on PCs,

internet and dedicated websites. In 2013, the commercial PC segment had hit a high of

6.7 million units, with a year on year growth of 15.8% over 2012. India’s PC market

grew at 4.8% in 2013 but 2014 looks grim, said IDC4. According to Zinnov, while the

overall domestic IT spends were expected to grow at a CAGR of 12% to reach USD 36

billion by 2015, SMEs would grow at a CAGR of 15% contributing USD 15 billion by

2015. Half a million SMEs in India had their own websites and two million accessed the

Internet, four million used PCs, which was expected to grow at 30% from 2011 to 2015.

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Evolution of IndiaMART:

The Initial Years Dinesh Agarwal graduated in engineering from India, and was working

in the United States for a software services firm. Sensing the differences in Internet

penetration between India and the US, he saw a great opportunity to develop an

Internet-based business in India. His initial thoughts were about setting up an Internet

Service Provider (ISP), but back in 1996, India had not opened up ISPs to private

participation.

While mulling over business options, he realized that a website could deliver great

value to SME exporters by connecting them to buyers in developed economies. A

website was an efficient and intuitive value proposition, even though the penetration of

computers and internet had not reached significant levels in India. Dinesh, therefore,

came back and began creating websites for small and medium export oriented

businesses, and thus was born IndiaMART in April 1996.

It was a good value proposition; he could charge Rs. 50,000 - Rs. 60,000 for a 10-page

website and Rs. 10,000 – Rs. 15,000 for a one-page microsite. At the end of its first

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year of operations, IndiaMART had already clocked in Rs.6,50,000 in cash collection

and was already breaking even at operations front.

The Early Days and Challenges Galore

It was early days in the business and Dinesh &Brijesh had to don the sales clerk’s hat

during the day and double up as the tech geek during the nights, working determinedly

all through the initial years. They were quick to understand that website development

alone would not be sufficient to sustain IndiaMART’s premium positioning. More value

definitely need to be added to these websites to ensure that customers continued to

use the services.

The requirement for Indian products in Western markets was growing rapidly, but there

was a huge gap in the information availability. The Yellow pages were not able to keep

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up with the pace of change in a country where street names were disorganized and

were even changed frequently; and telephone penetration was growing fast,resulting in

frequent changes. Even industry associations did not have reliable database of their

members, and tradeshows were not frequent enough to become a regular source of

business

This gave birth to IndiaMART.com - The Online Directory during the period. It was

imperative that IndiaMARTcreate a platform that included a searchable online directory

of exporters from India. Sourcing of data for creating this directory was a challenge,

and IndiaMART had to piece together data on these companies from various

sourcesincluding export promotion houses, tradeshows, as well as members’

directories of industry associations.

As most Indian export promotion organizations were not tech practical understanding,

within a short span from its launch, IndiaMART became quite popular. Many buyers

considered IndiaMART as a Government of India Initiative, similar to the business

promotion organizations in China, Korea and Taiwan. Mention this and it brings a smile

on Dinesh’s face; he recalls how a buyer had written a ‘thank you’ note to him,

assuming that IndiaMART was aGovernment of India organization. While the directory

was getting developed, Dinesh could sense that search engines are bound to become

important.

Thus, much before the term SEO (search engine optimization) got coined, he worked

diligently to put in place a team, especially meant to optimize websites based on

search engine guidelines. All client websites created by IndiaMART started carrying the

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logo of IndiaMART at the bottom of their webpage, with a link to the relevant category

page at the IndiaMART website. That (the number of links that led to the category

page) significantly improved the page-rank for IndiaMART in the Google search

algorithm. With higher page-ranks, the IndiaMARTcategory pages were sometimes

ahead of any of the supplier pages, while searching for a product/ service onGoogle.

This high page-rank enabled IndiaMART to expand its reach to buyers looking to

source products fromIndia, without any significant advertisement/ promotion effort.

For IndiaMART, the two biggest challenges of that period were - low internet

penetration and lack of credible source of information related to small and medium

businesses. Dinesh &Brijesh, however, was convinced that in times to come, Internet

was going to bring in true convergence, and if he could find an interim solution to

theseproblems, IndiaMART would get a great first mover advantage. This belief led to

the first set of innovations coming from IndiaMART – The Free Listing and The Free

EnquiryForwarding, as Dinesh coined these terms. He designed a Free Listing Form

and started distributing it across – in Trade Fairs, etc.

He also sent the “Return Postage Paid” envelops with these forms to businesses listed

in different yellow pages. Those who filled the form and sent it back were rewarded

with a Free Listing in the online directory. IndiaMART received many enquiries for

businesses which did not have Internet access. Enquiries were printed andforwarded

via fax and snail mail – again, free of cost. The strategy started yielding results, as all

businesses, which received these free enquiries, expressed interest in having an online

presence, and over the period, many of these became IndiaMART’s paying customers.

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During this time, while Dinesh &Brijesh were busy building and growing IndiaMART,

Jack Ma was busy making Alibaba, it was his second attempt, after having failed in

making China Pages. From India’s perspective, two events had greatly fired the

imaginations of people. In December 1997, Saber Bhatia sold Hotmail to Microsoft for

an eye popping $400 Million, and Rajesh Jain sold India world to Satyam Info way

forRest.499 Crore. A lot of hype started getting created by the media around Internet

and the business opportunities it could provide. By 1999, several VC funded projects

were launched, following these two mega deals.

Dinesh’s team also followed the trend, and launched several B2C-oriented initiatives.

During that period, business plans were considered to be more important than content

and traffic. Dinesh, however, stayed focused on his original belief and never scaled

down his dream. Interestingly, by then, Jack Ma had raised a funding of $100 Million

and had started advertising Alibaba.com on television in the USA. By now, China had

already emerged as the global hub for manufacturing outsourcing.

The dotcom Bust and Life after Y2K.

The late euphoria of capital inflow in dotcom firms towards the end of 1999 led to a

financial bubble. All dotcom firms, which did not have sound monetization plans, had to

close their operations. A large number of engineers working on re-engineering projects

related to Y2K preparedness suddenly found themselves out of employment.

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This led to what is now known as the great dotcom bust. In quick succession, followed

the 9/11 terror strikes on the US, along with a long war in the Middle-East, resulting in

a global meltdown. By the turn of the millennium, three trends were clearly visible in the

marketplace for IndiaMART’s services. First, it became clear that Internet was there to

stay. Internet penetration in India had increased, leading to increased demand for

website creation and hosting, albeit at low value due to commoditizing of website

design by a host of desktop publishing (DTP) service providers. This resulted in

increased volumes of work at higher costs and lower margins.

Second, IndiaMART’s focus on the export market made it vulnerable to the changes in

the global market; the global meltdown resulted in as much as 40% reduction in export

volumes from India, significantly hurting the business of the company. Third, as

Information Technology (IT) and IT Enabled Services (ITES) industries in India grew in

volumes, with the growth of onsite-offshore models as well as offshore subsidiaries of

MNCs investing in India, attrition of trained labor began to increase.

IndiaMART used the slack time created by the slump in sales to tighten their

processes, improve cost consciousness and focus on new customer acquisitions. All

this while, IndiaMART operated from a small office on the third floor of an unauthorized

market located in MadhuVihar - a suburb of Delhi. “Yes, the meltdown depressed us

and we were pinched by the dropping margins because of commoditizing of website

design. Yes, we would do many things differently if we were to do them again. On a

second thought – may be not!” reminisced Dinesh.

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Dinesh loved working against the odds. Throughout the meltdown, he did run a tight

ship. Being frugal paid dividends. One fine day, a team from Business World, a leading

business magazine of India, walked through the doors of IndiaMART’s tiny office – they

were conducting a survey on dotcoms that survived the bust, and were infor a pleasant

surprise after viewing the company’s financial statements. They had unexpectedly run

into a business that not only survived, but was also making profits. How could this be

possible? In addition, presto – they ran a story with Dinesh’s photo on the cover page,

making him a celebrity overnight.

Dinesh, too, was surprised to find out that his’was the only profitable company at that

point of time. It was a big turning point in his career, as he confessed. Fromthere on,

there was no looking back for him. With renewed vigor, he made plans and started

expanding IndiaMART’s business through this turbulent time.Unfortunately, he had to

stamp down his dream of pursuing MBA (he had enrolled himself with a business

school in Delhi). In 2001, IndiaMART had around 1000 paying customers; Dinesh

&Brijesh took upon themselves an ambitious 10x growth target in 5 years – to reach

10,000 customers and expand to 5,000 product categories by 2006 was the aim.

Just before the 9/11, terror attack struck United States in 2001; IndiaMART acquired a

new office in NOIDA and shifted its operations there. Through the lean period of sales

(2001-03), IndiaMART began expanding its customer base beyond India’s National

Capital Region (Delhi and its suburbs). As their footprint expanded and

customersrealized increased order flows through the indiamart.com website, there was

a continued renewal of their subscriptions. Contrary to a lot of “dotcom” companies of

that era, IndiaMART explicitly focused on building its revenue through subscriptions

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(acquiring new paid customers as well as getting existing customers to renew

themsubscriptions), rather than worrying about number of page visits (or “eyeballs”) or

enterprise valuation.

Throughout this period of customer expansion, IndiaMART did not take an advertising

or promotion route. Dinesh said: “Google’s page-rank algorithm ensured that we were

always on top of any search results. We did not need any advertising. Google Search

did all the advertising for us.”

Amidst this stretched period of slow down, IndiaMART service pricing came under

stress and it had to drop the prices to an all-time low of Rs.5000/- for one-year

subscription. As the customer base started to grow, Trade Offers – a business

classifieds service, was added to IndiaMART’s range of offerings. Anticipating the fact

that buyers would prefer products to companies, the team had already started working

towards transforming the online company’s directory to a giant catalog of products.

IndiaMART’s value proposition, partly driven by search engine favoritism, ensured that

it continued to grow at around 30% CAGR, while other companies around it were

shrinking. All through this period, IndiaMART continued to invest in Free Listing and

Free Enquiry Forwarding. Many registrations had started to come to IndiaMART

organically.

Changing Landscape: 2004 – 2007.

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As the global economy rebounded from the slump it hit on the aftermath of the dotcom

bust and the 9/11 terror strikes, business boomed at IndiaMART. Outsourcing as a

concept gained prominence and suppliers from emerging economies like India and

China were sought after. The domestic market was also growing significantly.

Between 2003 and 2006, volume of Indian (non-IT) exports grew from Rs. 2,933 billion

to Rs. 4,564 billion at a CAGR of 16%7. As international buyers came looking for

suppliers from India, IndiaMART had a ready online searchable business directory that

could be used to identify sourcing options, thanks to over eight years ofpainstaking

effort.

For IndiaMART, it was new client acquisition led growth. It started expanding its

footprint across India and had opened offices in major metro cities. By 2006,

IndiaMART had achieved its target of having 10,000 paying customers. The

subscription price, however, could be raised only to Rs.9000, up from Rs.5000 in 2003.

As a result,despite achieving 10x growth in the number of customers, the revenue grew

only to Rs.18 Crores. Though it had a healthy 33% EBITDA, the Average Revenue Per

User (ARPU) remained very small. Maintaining the focus on acquiring new customers,

Dinesh &Brijesh decided that IndiaMART should also target improving their ARPU

fromRs. 18,000 (in 2006) to USD 1,000 (or Rs. 45,000) by 2009-10.

With a large number of listings, the marketplace that the duo had dreamt of seemed to

come alive. For almost a decade, the value proposition of IndiaMART was linked to the

search engine friendly websites that it developed –but within a span of couple of years,

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it changed dramatically. By 2007, indiamart.com – the marketplace had started to

deliver 80% value – only 20% enquiries were generated by customer’s own website.

As the marketplace started to grow in numbers, witnessing an increase in both, paying

customers and free-listed customers, it created an opportunity for a Premium Listing

service, and within a short span of its launch, it turned out to be a highly profitable

source of revenue.

2006 was the prime period for online classifieds business. Several companies in this

space raised venture capital. Naukri.com became India’s first online company to be

listed - a debut with a bumper IPO. Sensing the need for branding in order to stay

ahead of the competition, IndiaMART raised Rs. 15 Cr in 2006 in form of Ad Equity

fromthe Bennett Coleman Company Limited (BCCL). BCCL controlled a large share of

popular media including leading dallies, The Economic Times and The Times of India.

The marketplace was seeing a significant growth, when Dinesh sensed the need for a

service that could help buyersin selecting suppliers. There were a few companies in

the business of issuing certification – however, these self-professed contractors of trust

certification hardly added any value, in exchange of hefty premium they charged.

Their certification was limited to a simple telephonic verification of a few facts.

IndiaMART needed something more substantial, and during one of the brainstorming

sessions with his team, Dinesh &Brijesh found out the solution – The “Indian Red

Tape”, the best tool for establishing the trust profile.

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If one had to do business in India, it required several registrations and certifications (it

still does). And there could be no better proof of authenticity, than a collection of these

certificates. IndiaMART then designed a unique score card, which was based on the

availability of the documents like Company’s Registration certificate, Partnership Deed,

PAN Number, Import Export Code (IEC), Registration with Shops and Establishment

Act, PF/ ESI Registration and many such similar documents.

If a business scored theminimum qualifying score on this formula, it was eligible for

IndiaMART’s Trust SEAL. IndiaMART launched Trust SEAL in partnership with the

country’s premier credit rating agency, CRISIL. However, unlike other ratingagencies, it

was priced at less than one fifth of the prevailing market price at that time.

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The Competition

India MART is biggest and nearest competitor was Alibaba.com a China-based e-

commerce company, founded by Jack Ma a former English teacher and 18 others in

1999. Other competitors included Just dial, Trade India, globalsources.com,

thomasnet.com among many others. Although all of them offered lead generation and

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were matchmaking platforms bringing buyers and sellers together, each of them had a

different focus.

IndiaMART for instance, focused on its suppliers’ directory, whereas Alibaba focused

on products, Trade India on print media and Just dial on telephone services. Though

these online trading companies served the SME market to a certain extent, they were

present across markets, and sometimes even overlapped in their listings. According to

a report by the Federation of Indian Export Organizations (FIEO), exports through the

e-commerce route had grown over 400 % to $1.4 billion from 2010 to 2012. According

to Forrester Research Inc., a market research firm, e-commerce sales in 2013 were

estimated at about $1.6 billion9.

However, exports declined 1.76% to $300.6 billion in 2012-2013. According to Ernst &

Young, India's B2B market in 2011 stood at just US$50.37 million, a fraction of a small

but rapidly growing domestic e-commerce market of US$10 billion11. As various

models evolved and coexisted, the B2B opportunity in India began to attract attention

from many players. Alibaba Group: The Alibaba Group, China's leading B2B e-

commerce Company, was started to cater to small businesses.

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The Group’s major businesses included Tabaco Marketplace - an online shopping site,

Tmall.com a platform for online shopping for top-quality international and Chinese

branded merchandise, Juhuasuan - a buying platform, 1688 - a wholesale marketplace

for domestic China trade among small businesses, AliExpress - an marketplace for

global consumers, Alibaba.com - a global wholesale platform for small businesses,

Alibaba Cloud Computing for developing platforms for cloud computing and data

management and Aliped to facilitate online and mobile payment solutions in China.

Alibaba went public with its maiden IPO in 2007 at a valuation of US$10 Billion, which

grew past US$ 17 Billion within no time.

Immediately after its IPO, Alibaba opened offices in India and started marketing its

services to Indian Exporters. Later, they partnered with Mumbai-based yellow pages’

services company, Info media India. In India, Alibaba.com drove various local

initiatives, for instance, workshops were conducted to train supplier members on how

best to leverage e-commerce and how to make the most of their account. Alibaba.com

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had local offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore and Ahmedabad. Comparing

the Indian market with its major competitors, Khalid Iskar, the Country General

Manager of Alibaba.com India, said, “India is a unique market as the characteristics of

Indian SMEs are very different to Chinese counterparts.

For instance, what may work well for a supplier in India, with local buyers, may not

work with a buyer in China, as cultural, technological and socioeconomic factors have

an impact on local businesses. Indian businesses on the Alibaba.com platform also

differ from other markets as they have a language advantage.

This allows them to respond to inquiries in a timely and efficient manner while reducing

language-barrier issues12.” Alibaba.com’s unaudited financial profits for March end

2012 were USD53.8 million, with a total of 79.8 million registered users, 10.3 million

storefronts and 753,955 paying members13.

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Just dial:

A search service provider with a database of listings across categories was founded by

VSS Mani. The company started offering local search services in 1996 under the Just

dial brand, and became a dotcom company in 2007. It was the first mover in this space

in India. In 2013, Just dial had a database of approximately 9.1 million listings, of which

2.39 lakh listings were paid campaigns.

It addressed 364 million search requests across multiple platforms, such as the

internet, mobile Internet, over the telephone (voice) and text (SMS), with 68% of the

search requests from the internet. The business model was to offer a dial-in number

which was an operator assisted, hot line accessible, 24/7 with multi lingual support.

Business owners had the option of listing their business on the database for free and if

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they wanted priority in listing or prominence, just dial charged a fee. Just dial was listed

on the Bombay stock exchange in 2013. In the first quarter of 2014, Just dial’s

revenues grew 28.3 % over the same period in 2012-13 to around Rs.271 crores, while

its net profit rose 82.2 % to Rs.57 crores.

The organization had a market capitalization of Rs. 12,430 crores and ranked 99th in

the 100 most valuable companies in India in 201414. In the same year, just dial

initiated a ‘Search Plus’s Service for users, in order to transition from being a provider

of local search and related information to being an enabler of such transactions. just

dial had its registered and corporate offices based in Mumbai, with branches in

Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi, Hyderabad, Jaipur,

Kolkata and Pune.

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Tradeindia.com:

Trade India, headquartered in New Delhi, with pan India operations was maintained

and promoted by Infolog Network Ltd, and conceptualized in 1996. The business

model was to take the offline yellow pages’ model online. Trade India received an

average of 20.5 million hits per month. In 2013, the platform had a database of

27,44,394 registered users15. Trade India’s revenues were earned from listings which

ran into several lakhs with charges ranging from Rs. 3,000-13,000 annually.

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Global Sources Ltd.:

It was a Hong-Kong based business-to-business media company that provided

information and integrated marketing services, with a particular focus on the Greater

China market. The Company, together with its subsidiaries, provides services that

allowed global buyers to identify suppliers and products, and enabled suppliers to

market their products to a number of buyers. It operated in three segments: online and

other media services, exhibitions and other segments.

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Thomasnet.com:

It was an information and technology company that connected manufacturing and

industrial buyers and sellers. The platform had a news section which covered product

news, information, business trends and analysis Some platforms also catered to niche

products or services, like, for instance, the e-commerce Kolkata-based Junction

Services, which ran Metal junction, the world's largest online marketplace for steel and

allied products. The Metal Junction portal, the largest e-marketplace for steel in the

world, was a 50:50 online steel sales and procurement joint venture between SAIL and

Tata Steel, and followed a transaction-led model. It had sold over 4 million tons of steel

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for its clients at an average rate of 150,000 tons per month. It’s over 5,400 strong buyer

community comprised of traders, fabricators, re-rollers and end-users

IndiaMART - Business Model

Buyers Suppliers

2 Sided Platform

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Suppliers provide QUOTATIONS for the product

2007 – 2010: Domestic Focus and Rapid Growth

2007-10 was an interesting phase in the evolution of Internet-based businesses in

India, as well as IndiaMART’sgrowth strategy. Indian currency had appreciated

significantly against US$ and reached to Rs.38 for 1 US$, severely impacting the

export from India. This was followed by the global financial meltdown in 2008 –

arguably the worst economic crisis since the Great depression of the 1930s. India was

no exception, and the rules of the game changedDramatically.

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A customer base of over 10,000 posed a fresh set of problems for IndiaMART. High

dependence on low skilled manpower led of increasing number of errors in customer

catalogues, resulting in an increase in customer churn; while higher inflation was

pushing the costs up.

The meltdown took Dinesh back to the era of 2001, albeit with one difference – now,

there was money in the bank, and a competent team in place to execute. Dinesh got

down to doing what he did best – re-engineering processes to improve efficiencies and

protect its operating margins. IndiaMART decided to increase the subscription price

and launched the scheme, wherein customers could pay for two years and get the

subscription for the third year free of cost.

Three-year lock-in helped in reducing customer churn. Premium listing was also

contributing in improving the ARPU. To reduce human errors, template based mini-

dynamic catalogue was launched. It replaced the custom made microsite, and the

subscription price was increased from Rs. 9000. to Rs. 15000. From a customer’s

perspective also, it was a good move, as the single page microsite was upgraded to a

dynamic catalogue with many features. Templates led to elimination of errors and

reduced dependence on low skilled design team – there was a significant increase in

the quality of catalogues. All these changes gave a great boost to the overall sales

performance of the company.

During the same period, search engines, Google in particular, realized that people

searching through the Internet preferred to see local results and therefore, modified it

and made it locally relevant. This implied that search results would prioritize links to

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pages that were in the same geography as the user. ForIndiaMART, it meant that their

appearance in the international search results (made by prospective buyers) would be

lower than before. For instance, if one searched for “pencil suppliers” from a PC in

Mountain View, CA, the top ranked results would include suppliers from that

geography, rather than a global listing of suppliers (including the IndiaMART writing

instruments category page). This shift by Google to provide locally relevant search

helped IndiaMART garner a huge share of domestic B2B (business-to-business) trade.

Two developments took place at IndiaMART. With the rapidly increasing domestic

adoption, IndiaMART started toshift its focus from international business to domestic

business. The shift meant that another round of product innovation was required.

Dinesh instructed his team to step out and meet customers to gauge their reaction to

the slump in export business. As anticipated, the feedback was clear that the exporters

who were earlier averse todomestic orders had started catering to local clientele,

despite the drop in margins. There was a huge business opportunity amidst this crisis –

domestic focus meant rapid growth in the market size possibility of building an online

business community in a highly fragmented domestic B2B marketing segment started

to look much moreappealing than the international business.

Dinesh &Brijesh decided to raise capital and invest in products with an aim to establish

its leadership position in the domestic market. IndiaMART raised US $10 Million from

Intel Capital in 2008. While the revised business strategy was getting formulated,

IndiaMART had already started re-modelling the online directory behind the scenes. In

fact, the process was initiated long time back – to transform indiamart.com from a

company directory into a giant product catalogue. Until then, IndiaMART offered only a

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two-liner business description to Free Listed companies, and its product catalogue was

derived from its paying customers. Dinesh decided to offer a full-featured business

catalogue to all free listed companies as well– and suddenly the product catalogue

started to grow in leaps and bounds.

The sales team evaluated on a regular basis if clients benefitted from the domestic

focus. The move helped IndiaMART in retaining its preferred positioning in Google, as

even with its changed algorithm, Google continued to find high quality content to show

to its users. Google’s locally relevant searches helped IndiaMART garner a huge share

of domestic B2B (business-to-business) trade.

Investments made by BCCL in 2006 and Intel Capital in 2008, significantly aided the

growth intent. Following these investments, IndiaMART built a professional board filled

with independent directors, including well-respected business leaders like Sarayu

Srinivasan (Intel Capital), MacheteMoor (ICICI), Deep Karla (MakeMyTrip.com), and

PN Vijay (Investment Advisory). This reconstituted board helped IndiaMART

significantly in disciplined financial Reporting.

Increased internet awareness and its usage as a marketing tool implied that many

SMEs were using IndiaMART as their chief source of buy leads. More and more SMEs

who used free listings as a trial converted into paid subscribers on the IndiaMART

platform, resulting in IndiaMART achieving around US$ 750 ARPU in 2009. By 2010,

India MART had 14,000 Paying subscribers and had achieved its ARPU target of

US$1000 per paying customer.

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The annual cash collection topped Rs.61 Crore. This was achieved partly by

increasing the subscription pricing, and partly from premium listing solutions.

Dinesh presented an aggressive plan to its Board, a plan which was based on rapid

customer acquisition. It was anaudacious move, after staying profitable for 12

consecutive years, IndiaMART was now prepared to tread the path of high cash burn.

The revised aim was to grow to 1 million listed businesses and 100,000 paying

customers.

By 2010, after strongly trying to gain market-share for two years, Alibaba, IndiaMART’s

closest and biggest competitor, had started to reduce its focus from the Indian market.

It was clear that it aimed at only those companies which were focusing on Exports from

India – apparently it did not show any intent of serving India’s domestic B2B

Businesses. IndiaMART’s “Do-it-for-me” approach, as against “Do-It-Yourselves”

approach of Alibaba, coupled with the large differences in Internet adoption within

Indian SMEs and Chinese SMEs, turned out to be the biggest Roadblocks in Alibaba’s

path.

2010- 2012: Rampant customer acquisition

By 2010, the internet penetration and usage landscape in India had changed

significantly. MakeMyTrip, one of the leading online travel agencies, had created

history by listing on NASDAQ with a bumper IPO. There was a renewed faith of

investors in online businesses. Several online ventures had received initial round of

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funding, and hadstarted advertising heavily in the traditional media to create

awareness about their businesses.

IndiaMART embarked on an ambitious customer acquisition target of 100,000 SME

subscribers. Sales closures were monitored by the week (as opposed to by the month,

as was the norm until 2008). Further, in order to accelerate their customer acquisition

efforts, IndiaMART opened offices at the rate of one per week – at times, several within

the same city. In just the year 2010, IndiaMART opened 52 offices in 52 weeks – the

idea was to ensure that a sales person officers (commonly referred to as “Feet on the

Street”) should not travel more than 30minutes to meet a customer. Attractive incentive

plans were offered to motivate the sales team to go out and bring in more customers.

With burgeoning number of sales officers, IndiaMART acquired about 21,000 new

customers in 2010 and another 28,000 customers in 2011. The size of the domestic

business went up to 80% of IndiaMART’svolumes due to these rampant customer

acquisitions. Within a span of two years, the rate of customer acquisition had climbed

to 2500 customers a month, from around 400 customers a month. IndiaMART had

spent Rs.40 Crore in a year in branding and customer acquisition process.

During this period, IndiaMART also re-located its corporate office to a larger and far-

superior facility on Noida- Greater Noida Expressway.The growth in customer

acquisition, however, brought with it a variety of problems. It exposed chinks in

theorganizational processes that were designed to support a lower growth, resulting in

the acquisition of non-relevantcustomers – essentially the ones who could not have

benefited from the IndiaMART platform.

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A significant number of these suppliers did not present good quality content (about

themselves, and their products and services) on the platform, which reinforced the poor

response they got from their customers through the IndiaMART platform. Part of the

problem was attributed to the production department, which was responsible to work in

partnership with the suppliers to ensure high quality content on the supplier pages.

Perhaps, they were not able to manage such a rapid customer acquisition. This poor

quality of information about the suppliers resulted in an Increase in search costs for the

buyers, resulting in lower business provided to these newly acquired suppliers.

Consequently, these new suppliers either did not receive sufficient business to warrant

continuation of the subscription, or received poor quality requirements (that did not

match their product portfolio). The first year churn rate (number of customers

discontinuing their subscriptions at the end of the first year) reached record high levels.

The sullying of the supplier pool also manifested in the lowered ARPU, which went

down from US$742 per month in 2009 to US$500 per month in 2011.

This coincided with the period when ecommerce businesses were rapidly gaining

ground in India – companies like Snap deal, Flipkart, Mantra, Jabong etc. had raised

large sums of capital and were investing in building their online platforms. India

remained a high-inflation economy, pushing the cost of people, operations and

infrastructure.

Also, until 2012, most transactions originating via IndiaMART concluded outside it.

Buyers would call the suppliers directly through the contact details provided on the site

and given that the call came from an unknown number, it could not be tracked in

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anyway, resulting that several suppliers would either not pick up the call or their

response would be delayed. It was also not possible for IndiaMART to track the

responsiveness of their suppliers, after theinitial contact between the buyer and the

supplier was made. For instance, a supplier might agree to email the buyer his product

brochure during the telephonic conversation, but might either forget to do so, or do so

only after a significant delay.

Hence, IndiaMART launched the “Preferred Number Service” (PNS) in 2012 for buyers

to connect with the suppliers. The feature is similar to Google Voice, used in USA. PNS

service came with several bundled advantages.

Whenever a buyer called on the supplier’s number (listed on the IndiaMART website),

the call would be received from a single number (+91-11-71997199). In this way, the

supplier could immediately understand that the particular call was from an IndiaMART

buyer trying to reach them for business, so that they could respond appropriately.

These PNS calls could also be routed to multiple phones in the supplier organization

(for instance, multiple partners or at the office landline and the managers’ mobile

phones) to ensure higher response rates. All calls, including missed calls could be

tracked – a huge value for SMEs considering they did not have any organized CRM

applications. The process helped IndiaMART to track and evaluate the responsiveness

of the suppliers to the queriesreceived through their platform. The suppliers who were

consistently non-responsive were downgraded (highproportion of missed calls/

significant delay in responding/ response after multiple calls) in their search

results,regardless of the package chosen by them or the relevance of their products/

services in the buyer’s search.

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Also, there was a cut down on spam/ telemarketers, as the PNS service was able to

identify and block these calls. PNS was then implemented for all the clients, though it

was originally designed only for the premium ones. The investment was justified.

By March 2012, IndiaMART’s customer base had increased to 48,000 from 14,000 in

March 2010. However, the customer churn rate had reached the same level as their

new customer acquisition rate, and the target of 100,000 paying customers started to

appear as a tough task.

2013-14: The Turning Point

Inadequately equipped processes and team, high cash burn, high customer churn –

diminished value delivery. Above all, due to crowding of non-serious suppliers on the

platform, the buying experience was getting impacted – most of the performance

indicators were signaling caution/ bad times ahead. IndiaMART’s leadership needed

solutions for managing influx of large number of customers. One of the obvious

problems was the lack of management bandwidth and expertise. The team was

inadequately equipped to handle this large volume of business. Till then, IndiaMART

had relied on internally equipped resources, as they used to hirefresh candidates out of

college and then develop these resources over the period of time to take on higher

responsibilities.

This strength became their weakness – they needed more talent – and lateral hiring

was the only recourse. IndiaMART started looking out for people to join them at all

mid& senior levels of management. The cash burn had reached above Rs.4 Crore a

month, but Dinesh was not very worried about high burn rate, it was one area that he

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was quite familiar with and was confident to bring it under control within 3-6 months’

time. However, a multi-pronged approach was needed. Rationalizing the sales setup,

including the number of offices, size and span of the sales team and support

infrastructure was the first step in this direction. The team that had swelled to over

5000 employees was brought down to about 3000. Dinesh managed to bring the cash

burn in control within two quarters.

IndiaMART began weeding out the flippant sellers actively. In order to ensure that

wrong customers are not acquired, a negative list of businesses was prepared.

Businesses and service providers with hyper-local focus were added to this list and

IndiaMART started refusing paid listing to these customers.

IndiaMART introduced a four-category classification system to rank the supplier

content and serve as a guide for the production team to call the suppliers and seek

specific content. Changes were made in the order booking process. In order to ensure

right commitments to the customer, pre-printed preformat invoices were introduced and

an order verification process

(OVP) was setup. The OVP team ensured that the customer’s expectations were set

correctly. However, in spite of these efforts, if the quality of content did not improve

within a specified period after customer acquisition, due to the suppliers’ unwillingness

to provide additional data or they were simply non-responsive, they were pulled out of

the system and the money collected from them was even refunded in full.

A series of product innovations were implemented in quick succession to improve the

value delivery to suppliers. Till then, IndiaMART used to impose a limit on the number

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of products that a paying member could showcase in its catalogue. IndiaMART

removed the cap on number of products. It was raised to 400 – (virtually unlimited) for

SMEs. This enhanced the value proposition of the catalogue, especially for the

customer, and also gave a big fillip to the marketplace. This rationalization contributed

to significant increase in the ARPU numbers as well.

Table 1: ARPU trends (2004-13)

By this period a surprise benefit of the PNS service came in the form of buyer success

ratio IndiaMART was able to track and measure the calls that were getting answered,

and also started educating its customers on the importance of attending these calls

which was later linked to their position in listing on market place compelling most of

itsmembers to start taking IndiaMART Buyer’s calls

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IndiaMART’s platform, by this time, had aggregated over 1 million suppliers and 10

million Products. Buyers had to patiently wade through a sea of suppliers and ferret out

the ones relevant to them. Dinesh wanted to simplify the use of the platform and

conducted several idea-generation sessions, along with studies of other similar

platforms in different countries. One of the most prevalent concepts at that time was

offering easy-to-use filters to the buyers,

using which they could refine their search on the platform. However, Dinesh believed

that such features only make the platform complex, and their usage turns the

customers away from it. He believed in keeping the UI/UX simple.

He started thinking - how could IndiaMART assist buyers in fulfilling their request for

quotes, expression of interest, tenders, invitation to bid – or simply speaking, their

buying needs. The buyer’s marketplace emerged as the solution.

IndiaMART started encouraging buyers to share/ post their buying needs. A team was

put in place to call back the buyer, immediately after posting the requirements to

discuss the same in detail. The content was then moderated andpublished as a buy-

lead on the buyer’s marketplace. Anyone could see the full requirement, except the

contact details of the buyer.

Thus, was born IndiaMART’s award winning “Buy Lead” (BL) product, that allowed

interested suppliers to respond with their quotes and offers. It was not only simple and

effective, but also a unique “pay per seen lead” concept. There are several Pay Per

Lead models effective globally, however all these models are known to generate “Blind

Leads”, i.e. one gets to know about the requirements only after the lead lands in your

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mailbox. BL emerged as a unique pay-as-you-go offering and rapidly started gaining

popularity. With every BL package, few monthly credits

were provided. The product won a prestigious award for innovative concept and

execution.

The service was absolutely free for buyers, whereas suppliers had to pay a nominal fee

per lead for the introduction.

Suppliers earned some credits during their initial sign-up, and could subsequently buy

them off the site. The price (credits) for access to the buy leads was initially variable,

but was soon standardized as Rs.200 per lead, an amount that has remained

unchanged until February 2014. Very soon after its introduction, there were over

100,000 active buying requirements on the IndiaMART platform. With the formation of

the buyer market place, IndiaMART gave the sellers on the platform an opportunity to

source material for the products that they make through their website. For instance, a

coat manufacturer could register at IndiaMART as a supplier and respond to buyer

enquiries; at the same time, he could source threads and buttons for

manufacturing his coats through IndiaMART.

Without active encouragement, by 2013, nearly 25% of the sellers on the site also

bought through IndiaMART. A key target that the company hoped to achieve was to

engage with 51%

of sellers on their platform as buyers as well. As of 2013, the website of IndiaMART

supported about 40,000 suppliers which an ARPU of US$ 503. Its revenues primarily

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stemmed from subscription to list on its online directory of suppliers stood at Rs.127

Crores (in Mar

2013), up from Rs 36 Crores in 2010 (a CAGR of 52%). Due to heavy spending on

infrastructure and people, IndiaMART made a loss of Rs.8.8 Crores for the year ending

March 2013

In the meantime, IndiaMART’s employee count also grew from 1412 employees in Mar

2010 2689 employees in Mar 2013 (this was after the rationalization and trimming of

rampant customer acquisition spree) bringing with it a rising employee cost.

Employee count

YEAR March 2010 March 2011 March 2012 March 2013 March 14

EMPLOYEE 1412 3714 2916 2689 2800

COUNT

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In order to address customer responsiveness, IndiaMART also launched its toll-free

number and encouraged customers to raise their concerns, which were recorded in the

form of tickets. Customer grievances/ concern resolution became the new mantra for

the entire servicing team. Repeat complaints were taken very seriously. The servicing

team was instructed to do a complete 360° review of customer’s catalogue, whenever

a ticket was raised.

Several similarities could be drawn between the year 2001 and 2013 – however, this

time, one key difference emerged. In 2001, Dinesh &Brijesh were single-handedly

managing multiple roles, whereas in 2013, he had a strong leadership team in place

which was empowered to experiment and execute ideas during the course correction.

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Results were evident as the users of IndiaMART platform expressed their satisfaction.

There were huge gains invisits to enquiries/ Buy Leads ratio. The returns on

investment to the paid members grew significantly, riding on the back of platform

success matrices.

Customer churn had improved, the sales team started exhibiting greater vigor, and

there was a sense of urgency amongst all. At the same time, several ecommerce

companies (Snap deal, Flipkart, and many more) were receiving huge VC funds. Post

its successful IPO flushed with funds, just dial had started spreading its presence

beyond Tier-2 cities. Dinesh could see several challenges ahead, however, the

immediate need was to ramp up its customer acquisition rate and get the organization

back on track to achieve the target of 100,000 paying customers.

2014 and the Way Ahead

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As on Feb 2014, IndiaMART had a Pan-Indian presence with total 60 offices and

employing over 2800 employees. It attracted 10 million visitors per month to the

website and had over 49,000 paid subscribers, 3.5 million registered customers,

including 1.5 million active suppliers catering to over 10 million buyers. It earned its

revenue through four major sources: cataloguing services and subscriptions from

suppliers; premium listings of suppliers, charges for accessing buy-leads posted by

buyers, and advertising. With the clear shift in user behaviors where people were

becoming increasingly comfortable with shopping online, Dinesh &Brijesh decided that

it was the right time for them to make the most of the opportunity.

They agreed that one of them had to focus on this exclusively and build this business

from scratch. Brijesh took this challenge upon himself, and began giving shape to this

idea of bringing consumer shopping experience to business buyers, this marked the

birth of Tolexo – an online ecommerce platform for buying business supplies &

consumables. Within five months of Brijesh giving a concrete shape to the idea, Tolexo

had built India’s largest collection of consumables and supplies for businesses. As of

July 2014, Tolexo hosted over 150 product brands in six broad categories – safety,

security, fasteners, hand tools, power tools, and cutting tools.

Dinesh &Brijesh believed that Tolexo would help IndiaMART’s value grow by about

100x in the next three years. As IndiaMART entered the financial year 2014-15, it faced

a number of challenges.

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FUNDING

 In early 2009, the firm received 50 crore Series A round funding from Intel

Capital, a part of which was invested in IndiaMART, One97 Communications

and Global Talent Track.

 In March 2016, it raised Series C Funding from Amadeus Capital Partners and

Quona Capital. It is claimed that these funds will be used to scale up the

activities of IndiaMART and Tolexo in June 2018.

 IndiaMART has filled draft papers with SEBI to raise $88.24 million through IPO

and list on NSE and BSE exchange.

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AWARDS

 Manthan Award 2013 for Buy Leads Under E-Business & Financial Inclusion

Category.

 IndiaMART Bags Best Business App Award at GMASA 2017.

Business Model

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Services
Offered

Paid Free

Catalog Service Listing Order

Catalog
MDC* / Service
Enquires/Calls
Maximiser TS/SS/LS/ILP

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CHAPTER - 2

REASEARCH METHODOLOGY

Research Methodology

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OBJECTIVE OF STUDY:

1) To study the nature of new clients towards online business portal of IndiaMART.

2) Creation of Free Catalog Page of clients based on the above study.

Scope of study:

 There will be an increase in the number of the customers of the company.

 Company can work on its strategy building as an area of improvement

Research Design:

A research design is the arrangement of conditions for collection and analysis of data in a

manner that aims to combines relevance to their search purpose with economy in procedure.

It is a blueprint that is followed in completing study. It is broadly classified in to 3 types. <

 Exploratory Research Design

 Descriptive Research Design

 Causal Research Design

Our study was based on exploratory research design. Exploratory research is a type of research

conducted for a problem that has not been clearly defined. Exploratory Research Studies are

also termed as formulate Research studies.

METHODS OF DATA COLLECTION:

Primary Data:
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Primary Data are those data that are observed or collected from first-hand experience especially for

the purpose in mind.

Secondary Data:

Secondary Data are those data, which are collected for another purpose. In the other words,

Secondary data is data, which is being reused for any other purpose.

The data collected and used during the training period was basically a primary
data.

I used to visit various markets of New Delhi to interact directly with the clients by the means

of partially structured questions. The main methods of primary data used during this research

are.

1. Observation

2. Direct interaction

Statistical tools used:

MS Office

Duration of Study:

2 months (from June 2018 to July 2018).

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CHAPTER-3

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Explain the different activities done during summer training and write

your role in each activity.

ACTIVITIES

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ACTIVIES DONE BY ME IN INDIAMART DURING SIP

1) My first week was spent in the special programmed named shubhaarambh

organized by the company named India Mart.

2) After the shubhaarambh week, we got our separate id’s which was created by

the India mart for working in the market.

3) We need to go market, which was given by our external mentor.

4) My market place was Kashmiri gate Delhi.

5) In Kashmiri gate market we need to go and meet with the manufacturers,

suppliers, wholesalers, distributors on the daily basis.

6) Our work is to create a free catalog page (FCP) of suppliers.

7) Before creating the page, we define the purpose or benefits of this catalog page

and how this page is beneficial to you and your business .

8) After that, we need to take the suppliers mobile no, GST no, visiting card, email

id, images of the shop, images of the product, board of the shop.

9) After creating the whole page we need to cross check the details of the

suppliers.

10) At last we solve the queries ask by the supplier during the whole process.

11) Complete our target on the given time.

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MY ROLE

1) Role is a sales person.

2) Make new clients for India mart.

3) Creating free catalog page (FCP) of suppliers.

4) Gave detailed information about the working of India mart.

5) Meet new suppliers and old as well to solve the queries or the problems facing by

the suppliers.

6) My whole sip target was 100 FCP’s.

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About shubhaarahbh week

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Step 1-

Process for Generating Password

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Step-2

Put your Official Mail id

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Step-3

Log in Your Official Mail Id

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Step-4

Password for Mail Id

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Step-5

Select the Recover Password

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Step-6

Copy the separate password

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Step-7

This is the last step of the whole process now back to the home page and fill your

id password to log in in the India mart page

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We get the knowledge about market place where we need to go and work.

 Buyer primary activities

 Seller primary activities

 Product Category

 Listing Order

 Buyer Personalization

 Big Buyers

 Payments

Different platforms in India mart

Desktop View

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Mobile View

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Buyer’s Activities

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Seller’s Activities

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Process to creating a new catalog page for suppliers

Three details we needed for creating free catalog page, which are as follows:

1) Personal details.

2) Business details.

3) Product details.

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Indiamart.com has three categories, which are as follows.

Categories
MICRO\PROD
SUB UCT
CATEGORIES
CATEGORIES CATEGORIES

Business Categories

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Sub Category

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Product/ Micro category

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Listing Orders

INUSTRY LEADERSHIP PACKAGE

FEATURE PERMIUM LISTING

LEADING SUPPLIER

STAR SUPPLIER

TS/CATALOG MAXIMISER

MINI DIANAMIC CATALOG

VERIFY FREE CATALOG PAGE

FREE CATALOG PAGE

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Primary order of listing of suppliers in India mart

Suppliers in India mart are listed according to their paying status.

 All leading suppliers are on top.

 Followed by all-star suppliers.

 Followed by all trust seal suppliers and so on.

The ranking with in all leading supplier’s (as well as with in other customer type

i.e. SS/TS etc.) will in the following order of product enrichment status.

 Suppliers having hot products.

 Suppliers having products with prices.

 Suppliers having products with images.

 Suppliers having products without images.

Ranking of suppliers with in each product enrichment status (hot/prices/photos)

will be random.

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Big Brands

Brands having paid subscription with India mart.

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Big Buyer Programmers

 Among all the Buyers visiting India mart there are many who are Big Buyers &

who get Special Assistance from India MART.

 There are 10,000 Big Buyers whose turnover is more than 100 Crores

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Results/ outcomes of the activities performed by you at STP

organization

 My work during my summer internship is that we need to go to the market

and my given location to meet with the suppliers, manufactures,

wholesalers etc.

 We need to create free catalog page of the suppliers to connect with the

India mart at free of cost.

 My target during my summer internship was 100 catalog pages created or

we can say connect 100 new customers with the India mart.

Results/ Outcomes

 I achieve my target on the given time.

 I experienced the real field challenge during my internship, and take

it positively and complete my target in a proper manner.

 I learn too many things during my internship.

 I also get a good feedback from the company.

 My external faculty was very impressed with me.

 Company will get 100 plus new customers during my summer

internship.

 There was a good working environment in the company and my

faculty was gave us full support during my internship.

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Benefits to company from each of the activities performed by you.

There are too many benefits which company was getting from my side during my

summer internship programed which are as follows:

1) Company was getting 100 new clients.

2) The profit margin of the company was increase.

3) Company gather a new market place for dealing with the clients.

4) New persons get the knowledge about the India mart working process.

5) Reaching new suppliers.

6) Company’s image set in the customers mind.

7) Company get a new sales team.

8) Company getting our work done easily and fast.

9) Company getting a change to do business in the new market.

10) Company also getting the paid customers during my summer internship

programed.

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CHAPTER – 4

FINDNGS AND LEARNING

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Findings
Old shopkeepers were not willing to go online and preferred to go on with
traditional business model.

Wholesale industry is still facing tough time due to implementation of GST

and trying to recover from it.

As big companies are going for forward integration, the SMEs are facing a stiff
competition and finding it difficult to survive in the market.

Call conversion in to useful business orders were very less. This was the
primary reason for the lack of interest of the clients to join the online portal of
IndiaMART.

Learnings
Apart from convincing and persuading our customers, one unique thing we learnt was
to take criticism sportingly
Our nature of task was basically that of a salesperson. We had to persuade and
convince the wholesalers for registering on India Mart. Certainty; this helped us in
learning the skills of Persuasion and Convincing required by any person in his
professional as well as personal life.
During out visit to the wholesalers, we came to know that many of them were already
registered on it and were not satisfied with IndiaMart's services.
As soon as we told them that we are from India Mart, they immediately started
complaining about India Mart.
But we were the representatives of India Mart, we had to listen to the criticism.
We had to communicate their complaints to our company. We had to ensure that India
Mart's services would improve so that they are satisfied.
One more learning that is important was that, we came to respect Hard Work.
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We have been studying about hard work in our moral science books. We have been
told by our elders to do hard work.
But what really hard work is, we realized to a great extent in these two months.
Although our task was of similar nature all throughout the 2 months, but we had a

diverse experience.

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CHAPTER-5

 CONCLUSION

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 This internship has been an excellent experience for me. I got the

opportunity to meet so many people and learn new things, which I am sure,

that it will be beneficial to me.

 I understood the real work environment of a company, culture, deadlines.

 In the process of this internship, I have to do my own SWOT analysis and

now I know my strengths and weakness.

 I learn how to handle pressure situations, and how to effectively work in a

team.

 I learnt how to apply my theoretical knowledge in practical scenarios. There

were times when I could easily relate the situation to something, which I

have studied over so many years.

 Understanding the real market is very difficult. Every person in the market

exhibits different kind of qualities. So every time we need to change

according to the person personality and try to understand their need and

help them to exactly know their needs.

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 Convincing on the second part is very difficult as you are meeting the person

for the first time where you do not know the needs of the person and you

have to understand the person within few minutes.

 Before convincing anyone, I personally need to have complete product

knowledge as the sudden question by the suppliers may put you in a state

where you might be blank and have no clue, so product knowledge becomes

a necessity.

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CHAPTER – 6

Limitations

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 The finding of the study may not be applicable to other places except Delhi

NCR.

 The respondents were too busy to give exact answer to all questions.

 There is chance of under estimation of sales and income as it is the nature of

human beings.

 There are chances of information’s error.

 Chances of biased data collections to respondents

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CHAPTER -7

SUGGESTION

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Suggestions

1) The id’s generation process of India mart is very slow.

2) Parking space is not up to the requirement, and the process for parking is

very slow.

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3) The market they gave already covered by the India mart, which results is

finding of new clients is very difficult.

4) The process for log in the clients with India mart is too lengthy, and the clients

is not ready to give his/her more time.

5) Customers feedback was very bad who already the member of India mart.

6) Suggest taking the right customer/ person.

7) Upload the correct data related to the customers.

8) Suggest doing their business outside Delhi NCR.

9) The India mart application updated on the daily basis, which is great concern

issue.

10) Try to give the new market to the new employee.

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CHAPTER- 7

ANNEXURE

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ANNEXURE

I am the students of G.L bajaj and I am here to collect data and study about Customer
perception towards INDIAMART .The information given here will not be dispersed or
used other than academic purpose.
PERSONAL DETAILS:
Name:-……………………………………
Address:-………………………………..
Marital status:-……………….. Telephone no:-………………….. ….Date:-
…………………….
1. Please indicate your age group.
a) 20-29 years b) 30-39 years
c) 40-49 years d) 50 years and above

2. What is your business?

a) Business b) Service
c) Professional d) Others………………..

3. Please indicate the number of financial dependents of your business.

a) None b) 1-2
c) 3-4 d) 5 and more

4. Do you have any idea about online business

a) Excellent b) Good
c) Average d) Poor

5. Please divide your total income in terms of % under the following categories.
Below 20% 20-40% 40-60% 61% and more
Expenditure……………
Savings ………………..

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6. What % of your saving goes into investment in shares

a) 20% or less than 20% b) 20-30%
c) 30-40% d) 40% or more

7. You are taking promotions from last…

a) Initial starter
b) 1-3 years
c) 4-6 years
d) 7 or more

8. Which type of package would you like take

a) 1-2 months
b) 3- 5 months
c) 6-10 months
d) More than 1year

9.How frequently do you do investments

a) Daily

b) Weekly

c) Monthly

d) Yearly

11. Do you feel the need of Expertise knowledge during trading of shares

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a) Yes

b) No

12. INDIAMART are better than competitors

a) Highly agree

b) Agree

c) Neither agree nor Disagree

d) Disagree

e) Highly Disagree

13. You like to go for studying company profile before coming for promotion

a) Yes

b) No

14. Would you like to get promotion through India Mart

a) Ready

b) Not Ready

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CHAPTER 8

Bibliography

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Bibliography

WEBSITES

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IndiaMART

 https://www.facebook.com/IndiaMART/

 https://www.indiamart.com/

 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCL1y2Y3FouN8y6DJGj12MHg

 https://www.google.com/search?q=indiamart+logo&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx

=1&fir=oP5r3IlFYl8hOM%253A%252ClN6ji0U7cOwDgM%252C_&usg=AFrq

EzcnjhqRXF1imO55cz7jZJJ8LPgguA&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiP2MDHqb_dAh

VEVH0KHYdwB20Q9QEwAHoECAYQBA#imgrc=oP5r3IlFYl8hOM:

 https://www.indiamart.com/

 Seller.indiamart.com

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THANK YOU

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