MogliLabs gets $23 m in round led by Accel Partners and IFC

NEW DELHI: MogliLabs, which owns and operates B2B industrial goods marketplace Moglix, has raised $23 million (about Rs 164.57 crore) in a fresh round of funding, led by marque venture capital firm Accel Partners and existing investor International Finance Corporation (IFC).

The latest round of funding comes about 15 months after the Singapore and Noida-based company, which also counts Accel India, Jungle Ventures, IFC and former WhatsApp senior executive Neeraj Arora among its list of backers, closed its $12-million Series-B equity financing round in July last year.

“Today the manufacturing sector is $300 billion in size, and has the potential to reach $1 trillion by 2025. However, the adoption of technology is less than 1% currently… We foresee immense potential and scope of innovation in the B2B commerce space,” Rahul Garg, founder of Moglix, told ET. While Garg declined to disclose the valuation of the three-yearold company, post the closure of the transaction, sources have pegged it at about $100 million. With this round, Moglix has raised about $41 million in funding.

For Accel, the Palo Alto-based venture capital firm, which has backed the likes of Facebook, Dropbox and Slack, the investment in Moglix is the second bet it has placed this month, having led a ?250-crore investment in agritech startup Ninjacart, which also counts Accel India as an existing investor.

Moglix competes primarily with SAIF Partners-backed Industry-Buying, along with offline distributors, which dominate a highly fractured market. It caters to clientele across industries, including automotive, FMCG, mining, steel, chemicals and pharmaceuticals.

The company caters to both large and SME players in the manufacturing industry, with annual turnover ranging between Rs 500 crore and Rs 10,000 crore.

A significant portion of the funds raised will be utilised by the company, which has about 475 employees on its rolls, to ramp up its supply chain network, further build its team and its technology product suite, according to Garg.

“We expect to have 18-25 distribution centres over the next 12-15 months, up from our current 10 hubs,” Garg said. Additionally, the company is also looking to market the same across 100-plus geographies by the end of the current fiscal.

“We have seen rapid adoption of Moglix MRO Buyer Terminal and Digital Supply Chain products across auto, FMCG and heavy engineering customers. This enables our clients to have enhanced transparency and visibility for their indirect and direct procurement spend and contracts across plants,” Garg said.

The company was founded in 2015 by Garg, an IIT Kanpur and Indian School of Business, Hyderabad alum, after a five-year stint at Google that spanned across Singapore and Tokyo. The company, which claims to have over 4,000 suppliers, 2,500 brands and 300,000-plus stock keeping units (SKUs), is projecting a supplier base of 10,000 and 500,000-1 million SKUs over the next 12 months.