DECEMBER 20218B U D D I NG B I Z ZNEXPRT RAISES SEED FUNDING FROM SEQUOIA CAPITAL INDIA & LIGHTSPEED TO DISRUPT MANUFACTURING & EXPORTS SECTOR IN INDIAB2B manufacturing and commerce startup, Nexprt has raised $5 million in Seed funding from Sequoia Capital India and Lightspeed. The round also saw participation from early back-ers, Titan Capital and other notable angel investors. The company plans to use the proceeds to scale the existing business and launch new business ver-ticals in the manufacturing domain.The Indian manufacturing and exports space is a $200 billion+ industry on a high growth trajectory with significant tailwinds in the form of global macro factors like supply chain diversification and massive government support through the `Make in India' initiative. However, the manufacturing space, dominated by MSMEs, has historically lacked capabilities to compete with institutional players across Southeast Asia and China. Their inability to manufacture at scale and innovate in manufacturing impacts their global competitiveness, potential-ly resulting in billions of dollars of global commerce not being routed through India.Founded by Harsha Vardhan Kalipatnapu, Manav Garg, and Kunal Jain in 2020, Nexprt is solving this problem by building a full-stack vertical commerce business to standardise manufacturing. It is creating category-specific solutions, be-ginning with the home décor category and expanding to other business verticals, where manufacturing is similarly unorga-nized, in the next couple of months. The team at Nexprt over the past year has built a sales team across multiple continents to open up demand channels and has also deeply invested in manufacturing-related innovations and processes, enabling the team to execute at scale in India, what was only possible in China and SouthEast Asia till now."B2B trade is a mature and well-understood industry. To build a high quality business, one needs to understand cate-gory level nuances as each category is vast, with its own set of problems and bottlenecks - they may be working capital re-lated, they may be sales related or they may be manufacturing related. It is key to identify and solve for those specifically so that they can be the differentiators in the long term. Working
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