A file photo of Ratan Tata. Photo: Pradeep Gaur/Mint
New Delhi: Moglilabs Pvt. Ltd which runs business-to-business (B2B) industrial products marketplace Moglix on Monday said it has raised an undisclosed amount from Ratan Tata, chairman emeritus of Tata Sons Ltd.
The company in October raised a pre-series A round of $1.5 million from venture capital firms Accel Partners and Jungle Ventures. The funds will be used to enhance the technology platform, expand supplier base and increase marketing spends across Asia.
The funding was first reported by The Economic Times on Monday.
The company currently specializes in B2B procurement of industrial products such as fasteners and industrial electricals and is partnering with manufacturers and distributors across these categories in India, China and other Asian countries.
“While globally, top manufacturers have evolved towards adoption of technology for procurement and sales, Indian manufacturers have been slow to adopt technology, leading to process inefficiencies and limited marketing exposure. Moglix strongly believes that the unorganized supply chain in India can only be solved with a technology first mindset,” said chief executive officer Rahul Garg, a former Google employee who started Moglix in August 2015.
The company says its focus is to bring technology and manufacturing together to drive transparency, efficiency and scale for manufacturing companies within India, making them globally competitive and enabling the use of technology for procurement, sales and marketing, and supply network optimization in both domestic and global markets.
This marks Tata’s entry as an investor in a manufacturing tech start-up, adding to his portfolio of e-commerce and other technology-enabled companies.
Tata has invested in over 20 home-grown start-ups, including data analytics start-up Infinite Analytics Inc., online marketplace Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd), digital wallet provider Paytm (One97 Communications Ltd), cab hailing service Ola (ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd), data analytics company Tracxn Technologies Pvt. Ltd, online pet supplies store Dogspot.in (PetsGlam Services Pvt. Ltd) and online lingerie store Zivame (Actoserba Active Wholesale Pvt. Ltd) in the past 18 months.
[“source-Livemint”]