As founder, Divyaanshu Makkar believes that great ideas cannot be generated; they can only be discovered. In line with the philosophy, friends and colleagues – Divyaanshu, Mayur Bhangale and Vikas Garg – started discussing various ideas to disrupt the Indian export ecosystem, acknowledging the importance of international trade.

It led to the birth of Inasmuch assourcewizInasmuch as. The SaaS (software as a service) startup is building a platform to digitize exporters and help them grow and streamline their businesses.

“Given the importance of international trade in a country’s economy, we decided to strengthen one of the most neglected segments of this country: exports. We are building an operating system that allows exporters to manage all of their activities on our sales and marketing tools, procurement, production planning and logistics,” explains Divyaanshu, co-founder of Sourcewiz. Your story.

He adds that the team has launched its first product which helps exporters create personalized electronic catalogs for their buyers in less than two minutes. This solves the problem of exporters taking more than five days to create a catalog due to disorganized information. Moreover, they would not be able to share these products with buyers safely and risk leaking their designs to competitors.

Why this product?

In addition to this, Sourcewiz also helps exporters establish an online presence through their website builder and share recommendations from potential buyers with them.

“We are now working to digitize other parts of their business. We have customers in garments, handicrafts, home textiles, furniture and auto parts from India, Bangladesh as well as the United States,” adds Divyaanshu.

The core team is spread over Gurugram and bangalorewhile the sales team is spread across all major hubs in India including Panipat, Jaipur, Delhi-NCR, Bhadohi, Varanasi among others.

“Vikas and I have known each other since 2011, we went to IIT Delhi together and were in the same department and same hostel. Mayur and Vikas met at Zomato where Vikas was a product manager and Mayur was a software engineer,” he says.

The team started the business in July 2021 and made their first hire the following month. Sourcewiz was funded by Blume VC and Alpha Global Waveas well as high-profile angels such as the founders of Classplus, Tracxn, Loginext and Livspace, as well as industry angels such as senior management at Wayfair (the largest furniture marketplace in the US).

Speaking of investment, Sajith Pai of Blume Ventures says Indian exports have jumped 30% this year as it recovers from the disruptions caused by COVID-19 and India’s emergence as a parallel supply point to China. To keep pace with growth and grow even faster, exporters big and small are looking for tools that will digitize their workflows and help them trade faster and better.

“Sourcewiz is poised to be their partner on this journey. Early success in selling SaaS software has convinced us that Sourcewiz can bring $200 billion in online transactions. But more than the business potential is also the passion of the founding team – Divyaanshu, Vikas and Mayur – and their customer obsession that enthused us at Blume. It is this intense customer obsession that sets them apart and will set them on the path to success,” adds Sajith.

Understand the context

Speaking of the team effort, Divyaanshu adds, “We started meeting with exporters, visiting their factories from March 2021 and spending time with over 100 factory owners as well as various team members – from merchandising to production and logistics. Additionally, we even spoke with buyers to understand their buying experience in India. Sourcewiz is the result of these conversations and has carefully understood the inefficiencies and their impact.”

The team had realized that COVID-19 had actually changed the way exporters sold. Previously, most of their products were shown in person, either when the buyer visited the factory or at trade shows. After COVID-19, the process moved online.

“Our software helps exporters create electronic catalogs with features such as zoom, 3D view, analysis and request management (buyers can send requests directly through the catalogs). In just five months, we have built a complete product, integrated 50 exporters, 150,000 unique products are uploaded to the platform, more than 400 catalogs have been sent and viewed by more than 1,000 buyers in 63 cities and 15 countries,” says Divyaanshu.

Operation

Sourcewiz’s SaaS product allows exporters to manage their products (photos and information such as material used, size, etc.) on our platform. Its AI-based recommendation engine and smart filters allow exporters to find relevant products to share with the buyer to create a personalized catalog.

“Our catalogs can be shared via a link and exporters get detailed analytics on buyer activity,” says Divyaanshu.

According to a Bain & Co report, investments in the Indian SaaS market have hit $4.5 billion in 2021, and it will continue to grow. With the Freshworks IPO, several SaaS companies are now experiencing rapid growth.

Talking about the differentiator, Divyaanshu says most of the software in this market is often clunky, difficult to use, and doesn’t work seamlessly. What sets them apart, he adds, is the Sourcewiz user experience that allows customers over the age of 60 to use it.

The team charges an annual subscription that varies depending on how many products they want to keep.

Anirudh SinghSourcewiz investor Alpha Wave Global says,

“The domestic and international B2B commerce market is still completely technology-free and highly fragmented and unstructured. Within this value chain, there are a few key areas that create real inefficiencies. Sourcewiz targets these core issues with its end-to-end technology stack. We appreciated the sharpness of vision and deep understanding of issues from both the supplier and buyer side.

“This is reflected in the rapid PMF and monetization the company has demonstrated within three months of commercial launch. The company is already seeing traction from other international markets, which is a validation of its global thesis,” he adds.

Sourcewiz’s goal is to expand its SaaS offering to create a complete operating system for exporters to power not only their sales and marketing, but also inventory management, production and logistics.

“We plan to expand our customer base beyond India to Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Turkey and Indonesia over the next few years,” says Divyaanshu.