MonotaRO Co Ltd, Japan’s largest MRO B2B ecommerce company, announced it has invested $15 million in a joint venture with Emtex Engineering to grow the latter’s SME ecommerce business in India. Emtex Engineering operates Industrybuying.com.
Industrybuying.com, a leading Business e-commerce platform, sells a wide range of business and industrial products to SMEs as well as large businesses. It has over 5,000 registered sellers and more than 85,000 registered businesses – SMEs and large corporates, procuring online from Industrybuying.
Launched in June 2013 by Rahul Gupta and Swati Gupta, Industrybuying has become the preferred destination for leading Indian and international brands. The platform offers over 1.5 million products across 45+ categories ranging from Safety and Security, Electrical and Lighting, Power and Solar, MRO supplies and many more.
Post investment, MonotaRO will own 51.6 percent stake in the joint venture, IB monotaRO Pvt Ltd, while the rest will be held by Emtex Engineering Pvt Ltd.
“As part of the deal, Emtex has transferred its SME business into the JV, and continues to grow its large enterprise businesses independently,” a statement said.
Industrybuying.com now has access to MonotaRO’s know-how, product portfolio, supplier network, and ecommerce expertise to develop a market leadership position in India. MonotaRO gets entry into the large and emerging India B2B ecommerce market via a well established, profitable platform, the statement added.
“Through this JV, the company expects to efficiently develop its business in the Indian market, which is expected to grow significantly in the future, by utilising the ecommerce business model that Emtex has already established in India (industrybuying.com), and based upon the knowledge that the company has obtained through developing businesses in Japan and other countries around the world,” commented MonotaRO.
“MonotaRO’s deep ecommerce expertise and catalogue of over 10 million products can propel India business to a highly profitable, IPOable growth trajectory in a very short time. So, we are excited to be partnering with them in this phase of our growth,” Industrybuying.com CEO Swati Gupta said.
Parallelly, the company will continue to grow its large enterprise and other businesses independently and profitably, she added.
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