Developed countries like US and China have adopted the B2B business model most successfully and it will be interesting to see who emerges as the next poster boy of the B2B e-commerce business.

The Indian B2B e-commerce market is growing, but it’s only in its infancy. The Indian e-commerce landscape has been dominated by B2C companies until now. While B2C still continues to grow at an exponential rate in India, B2B e-commerce is now gradually picking up.

Today, every aspect of our lives is impacted by the technology. In 2008, when Flipkart started selling books online, who knew that one decade later Flipkart would be the poster-boy of the India’s e-commerce industry! However, Flipkart choose to focus only on B2C industry. When we talk about B2B industry, the market opportunity is currently valued at $300 billion and the same is expected to expand to $700 billion by 2020, according to a Walmart report. With this growth projection of $400 billion in next 3 years, the market presents tremendous opportunities for B2B focused businesses.

As we move and transform to a more technology oriented country, B2B e-commerce will see a major and faster growth curve than B2C. From the emerging trends visible in this space, businesses, contractor, MNCs, OEMs and manufacturing giants are adopting the B2B2C model much quicker and a J-curve growth is just around the corner.

However, online selling of business goods is not easy especially for the emerging markets like India. One of the many key barriers that hinder the growth path is to build trust among the consumers, whose comfort and beliefs still lie in traditional ways of selling or buying products or stocks. The technology adoption cycle and individual readiness to use technology for selling or buying products online is in an early stage and it would need another 5 years to move it to a mature level. This part of the problem would need to be addressed through better training and hand-holding. Also, a lot of sellers are local or city focused. Hence, most of them either are not ready to cater to a geographically distant client or simply have no resources to service them. This adds more to the woes especially when the e-commerce distribution has little scope of error. Likewise, the monetary and trust aspect still hold Indian businesses and customers back to trust B2B e-commerce players, considering the size of the transaction involved. The multi-level decision making is also one factor that has been hindering the B2B e-commerce growth.

Speaking on the potential of B2B e-commerce market, Suraj Dodeja, Director of Vashi Electricals says, “B2B e-commerce Industry is a lucrative destination and the portals that address key solvable points upfront such as real-time stock discovery, seamless web and mobile experience and delightful customer experience would have a great advantage. The lifetime value of every B2B customer is fairly significant. Hence, one of the key elements to ensure is a great customer experience as repeat customers are non-negotiable, at any cost.”

Indian B2B e-commerce space has been witnessing entry of new start-ups only in the last 2-3 years. Therefore, Indian start-ups in this space are yet to experience the taste of success. Developed countries like US and China have adopted the B2B business model most successfully and it will be interesting to see who emerges as the next poster boy of the B2B e-commerce business.