Mumbai, March 07
Larsen & Toubro (L&T) has launched an e-commerce platform for B2B industrial products and services. Called L&T-SuFin, the platform is aimed at both large businesses as well as MSMEs to source their industrial supplies as well as get unsecured financing.
SN Subrahmanyan, CEO & MD, L&T, said, “As India aspires to become a $5 trillion economy, there lies a critical need to digitalize supply chains to enhance the overall global competitiveness of Indian industries, especially small and medium enterprises. With the launch of L&T-SuFin, we take yet another leap in our digital transformation journey, building on our legacy of trust and deep understanding of the ecosystem.”
“We are confident about L&T-SuFin transforming the B2B marketplace for industrial products. Making it easily accessible, convenient, and transparent, even for the customers in and beyond tier-1 and tier-2 cities, thereby enabling a level playing field and inclusive growth for all businesses,” he added.
Bhadresh Pathak, Business Head, L&T-SuFin said, that L&T had been piloting SuFin for almost a year now. “So far, it hosts a selection of industrial products across 40+ categories as well as financing and logistics support, and had been able to reach over 20, 000 pin codes. It has onboarded over 17,000 entities.” Over the next 18 months, “We will be able to add more 30-40 categories of products on the platform, he added.
Expanding market reach
The platform registers and verifies sellers before onboarding them. According to Anup Sahay, Head-Corporate Strategy and Special Initiatives said that L&T-SuFin will not only help sellers to broaden their market reach, but it will also allow buyers to get competitive pricing.
When asked about the stream of revenues, Pathak explained that the company charges a transaction fee of 1.5 per cent on the overall transaction. It also charges an onboarding fee and other ancillaries including advertising on the portal.
On the other hand, speaking about the investment, Sahay said that there is absolutely no investment for the company during the transactions made by the buyer and seller.
The platform will provide working capital to MSMEs from a large array of banks and other financial institutions at attractive interest rates. The company has partnered with Banks including Axis Bank, ICICI Bank and Deutsche bank along with Public Sector Bank and NBFCs who will help the MSMEs to get the funding.