Across India, exist these wholesale markets, e.g., Sadar Bazaar or Ghaffar Market in Delhi, Bura Bazaar or Fancy Market in Kolkata, Dalmandi in Varanasi, SP Road in Bengaluru, Textile Markets in Surat etc, along with smaller wholesale markets in each geography. These markets evolved over time as seller clusters, and act as the primary sourcing channels. Almost all of the wholesale trade in India originates directly or indirectly from one of these markets.
A typical retailer in a town in India would visit the nearest such market for their purchases¹. It’s no easy task. Trust & credit issues would often limit them to a set of known sellers, and getting the best pricing can be a challenge. Reliable and cost-effective logistics issues don’t help matters either. As a result, they’d settle to low-frequency large quantity purchases to manage this hassle, thus locking in their working capital for longer time frames, and taking a larger inventory risk.
For sellers, the current model likewise limits them to either a known existing network or walk-ins. Credit collections are a hassle, and so is any notion of expanding the business.
The journey so far
We started Zupper with the belief that a dedicated B2B online trade platform for India’s 50M+ SMEs was sorely needed, but the speed at which our users adopted our platform, was a surprise, even to us. After all, it has just been just 1.5 years since the Zupper App became publicly available (June 2017).
