Recently, governments across India and the world are adopting technology solutions to make procurement process more efficient and to reduce corruption in the supply and procurement industry. Central Government’s e-Procurement and Digital India initiative has high potential to reduce the high cost of procurement in public sector and increase the transparency in procurement processes.

Similar problems are faced by small and large businesses alike. Businesses are often faced by the problem of sourcing the right products, managing multiple vendors and orders, keeping a track of all the purchases; all of which eventually result in a lot of inefficiency in their supply chain. This is where Bizongo comes in. Bizongo, an innovation driven startup that works out of 91springboard’s coworking space in Gurgaon is a B2B marketplace which enables businesses with an end-to-end solution for efficient procurement of packaging and material handling products. Right from the implementation of innovative packaging products to optimising packaging for efficient warehousing and shipping, Bizongo has helped businesses save cost and time at every leg of operations.

Humble beginnings

Bizongo was started by a group of 10 people in July 2015 with the realisation that B2B trade across companies mainly happens offline and is a very tedious process. There is no transparency in bulk buying and since levels of stakeholders are involved in the process, there are unnecessary delays. The team envisioned a product which could be a complete technology-driven solution to fulfill all the needs of businesses. That’s when Bizongo was born. Since then their product offering has evolved over time to completely suit the need of the industry. The company is headquartered in Mumbai with offices in Delhi and Bengaluru.

In 2016, Accel Partners (portfolio companies include Facebook, Dropbox, Ola, Flipkart) and IDG ventures (portfolio companies include Myntra, Yatra.com, Lenskart) completed a 3 million dollar series A round of funding in Bizongo. Recently, Bizongo CEO, Aniket Deb, was recognized in the impressive entrepreneurs under 30 list compiled by foreign media.

Making procurement transparent and efficient

The technology platform of Bizongo is a complete solution for procurement. Currently, it is vertically focused on the packaging and material handling industry which is valued at 40 billion dollars in India.

India is moving towards digitisation and Bizongo will use their flagship product Procure Plus, a complete solution for all procurement processes, to help digitize India’s packaging and material handling industry. On the Procure Plus platform, a business can build their own personalised catalogue, get complete analytics to reduce expenses, manage invoices, PO's and multiple shipment records online to easily maintain data digitally. Since the launch of procure plus in January, 200 business buyers of Bizongo have already adopted the product and this number is growing by the day.

Bizongo is integrating several other services on the platform to build a holistic procurement experience for businesses, like integrating credit financing and providing packaging design services.

Most of business buying involves credit. To streamline business credit, it currently offers different credit solutions for different scale of businesses. For example, if you are a buyer and require 20,000 rupees’ credit for your monthly purchase, you can avail interest free credit with zero documentation. If the packaging consumption of a business is high and the business is a trusted customer, they can avail credit up to 1 crore on the platform itself.

Packaging expertise

To establish the product as the go-to solution for any kind of packaging products, Bizongo Design Labs was launched earlier this year. Bizongo Design Lab functions to bring more thought into the packaging we use everyday. The lab takes care of two aspects of packaging: complete quality check of the packaging and packaging design. The team has already collaborated with design institutes to bridge the gap between design talent from institutes and the packaging industry.

Scale of business

Bizongo currently has 5000 registered business buyers across India with a 10x fiscal growth. The team proudly claims to have a Chinese mobile phone manufacturing giant shift to an Indian packaging manufacturer for corrugated boxes. The company serves small and big clients in the e-commerce, retail, supply chain, auto-component, food processing, hospitality and manufacturing industries and boasts of clients like Mondelez, Xiaomi, HUL, Myntra, Flipkart, Bigbasket, and Delhivery.