Six-year-old Moglix, the largest e-commerce platform of industrial goods in India, became the first industrial B2B (business-to-business) commerce platform in India to enter the ever-expanding unicorn family, after it raised $120 million in the latest Series E funding round led by Falcon Edge Capital and Harvard Management Company (HMC) and existing investors Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital India, and Venture Highway, increasing its valuation to $1 billion.
2021 has been a golden year for the Indian start-up ecosystem, which has seen no less than 12 Indian start-ups evolve into unicorns. Ratan Tata-backed Moglix, which handles B2B procurement of industrial supplies and sells industrial tools like hammers, drills, wrenches, office stationery and supplies, hospital supplies, and automotive supplies, joins this list with considerable ease. It serves over 5,00,000 small, medium-sized business and enterprises and has established 3,000 manufacturing plants across India, Singapore, the UK, and the UAE and counts manufacturing giants such as Hero MotoCorp, Vedanta, Tata Steel, Unilever, and Air India and NTPC as its customers.
In a statement, Rahul Garg, founder, and chief executive of Moglix, said, “We started six years ago with a firm belief in the untapped potential of the Indian manufacturing sector. We had the trust of stalwarts like Ratan Tata, and a mission to enable the creation of a $1 trillion manufacturing economy in India. Today, as we enter the next stage of our evolution, we feel this financing milestone is a testimony to our journey of innovation and disruption.” It has a supply chain network of 16,000 suppliers, over 35 warehouses, and logistics infrastructure.
Moglix was valued at about $250-300 million after it had raised $60 million in a Series D funding round in July 2019, when it raised $60 million led by Tiger Global. It is one of the few Indian firms to emerge as a leader in the B2B e-commerce market, along with fellow start-ups Udaan, Infra.market. Jumbotail, Ninjacart and ShopX. Moglix has raised around $220 million to date.
“Moglix’s distinctive customer value proposition and ROI are visible in its outstanding customer and revenue retention numbers. We believe Moglix is now well poised to scale and we are thrilled to back the Company in the next phase of its growth,” said Navroz D. Udwadia, Co-Founder of Falcon Edge Capital, in a statement. Moglix’s revenue rose from ₹62.4 crores to ₹217 crores during FY19 and has an annual revenue of $120 million. It was the pandemic that boosted its services as companies frantically bought supplies, while Moglix supplemented its usual services with selling items like gloves, masks, and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) kits, which are essential during the pandemic.
Garg said that in these unprecedented times, the company pledged its support to help solve the challenge of effective distribution and sharing of oxygen concentrators in the country even as India s battling the second wave of the pandemic.
