esupply.in: Office supplies e-store idea is good or bad?
Pune based startup company Orange Supplies Pvt. Ltd. have recently launched Office supplies online store esupply.in. This store enables small & medium sized businesses to buy all office supplies on a single online platform at competitive prices. and that sells office stationery and utilities online and operates in the B2B marketplace. The company caters to SMEs for bulk orders and deals in categories such as cartridges, toners, stationery and paper products, computer peripherals, cleaning utilities, office furniture and more.
esupply different from a normal online store due to the fact that their targeted clients are businesses and not direct consumers. Due to this, their logistics model is also slightly different.
Esupply founders is Simon Kruger and David Neisinger. They have an interesting background as well Both of them are Germans. Simon Kruger CEO of Esupply and David Neisinger is COO. Simon came to India 3 years back to do some research on Indian startups. Then he met David Neisinger who himself was working with a Pune based offshoring company after finishing his studies in Bangalore.
They got together to develop esupply.in after seeing huge potential for this space in Indian market. They currently have a 10 people team based out of Pune.
Given that office supply market requires lot of offline interaction as well, I was curious to know about their Business model. I spoke to founders of esupply to understand the same and how they were planning to scale.
We Asked why they chose the office supply segment in India and India as their base for starting their own venture, Neisinger said that during their stint in India, both of them realised that there was no proper e-commerce player in this category and therefore, wanted to venture into this space.
As of now, the esupply.in is only focusing on Pune but in the next phase, they will expand to other metros as well. Neisinger claimed that esupply is fulfilling a couple of orders daily and these are bulk orders in the B2B segment. According to him, customers are coming back to esupply twice a month or so. He also shared that retaining customers in B2B space is far easier than in B2C because of the nature of the business. And that is why esupply is keen to focus on the B2B segment alone. In future, the company would like to enter other categories such as printing solutions and food & water storage for offices.
Apart from offline competitors, esupply faces online competition from Rocket Internet-backed Officeyes, which was launched earlier this year. However, it is still an unorganised sector and with new startups coming into play, office supplies might turn out to be the next hotspot for e-tailing.
Here is one interesting thing David told me in the interview – The name of their company is Orange Supplies and so for every delivery they make to a client, they also deliver a real orange!
