Procol betting big on growth of digital procurement biz in India

Gurgaon-headquartered Procol, a next generation all-in-one procurement software, is betting big on the growth of digital procurement business in India. The overall procurement business in India is estimated to be $600 billion and is growing at anywhere between 10-20 per cent annually. Ironically, however, only less than two per cent of this huge business is digitised or is conducted digitally, said Gaurav Baheti, founder and CEO, Procol. The scope for growing in this field, therefore is enormous, he said.

"The market is just getting opened up. More than $1 billion in commerce has taken place via our network already. In value terms it amounts to Rs 7500 crore. We are confident that by 2024, more than Rs 75,000 crore of procurement business would take place via our network. Therefore, you can imagine how this business is growing. We now have 70-odd corporates on our platform, who do their procurement regularly through our platform," said Baheti. Bullish about the growth prospects, the company is expanding its office network. At present it has full fledged offices in Gurgaon and Mumbai. It will shortly have its offices in Kolkata and Bangalore.

That's not all. The fledgling startup has already lined up an ambitious plan of expanding its footprint overseas, tapping Middle East and South East Asian markets, bringing in more companies into its fold.

The CEO said that going forward their focus would be MSMEs and further down the line and even the startups. "We are confident that in the days to come, more and more mid-sized companies, small companies and even startups would start using digital platforms while procuring various goods and services. Our focus will be on FMCG, infrastructure, manufacturing sector," he said, adding,

"Simply put, Procol would streamline procurement of these companies by digitally organising it into three stages: sourcing, purchasing and payables. In light of the market's technology race and every business' desire for agile and faster models, Procol offers itself as a cost-effective, user-friendly option." Procol solutions actually support the marketplace for modern business, creating frictionless exchanges between thousands of buyers and suppliers across the entire source-to-contract process.

Procol also has a solution called ProOptimise that promises to optimise spends by multiple levers-spend aggregation, vendor empanelment, and strategised online negotiations to achieve cost savings. At present, it is dealing with goods, but eventually it will deal with various services as well and that will begin by Q4 this fiscal.

Beheti said that the company is rolling out another solution-ProCapital to extend payment days, reduce costs by capturing CDs and improve supplier relationships. The company is also in talks with a number of lenders to offer working capital once they have procurement orders. This service will be introduced within next few months, he said.