20 Things You Didn’t Know about Moglix
After working at Google Asia as the head of Advertising & Strategy, Rahul Garg knew it was time to take the plunge. He had been toying with entrepreneurship, and one conversation with a colleague about moving to Singapore from Japan led to him resigning the following day. That was in 2014, and it only took a year for him to decide the best idea to move on with finally. Garg settled on a B2B platform that would be known as Moglix. Since then, the company has been going strong though there are some facts about it that most people are yet to know. Here’s your chance to learn all you can about Moglix through these 20 facts.
1. It is the 13th Unicorn from India in 2021
According to Business Insider, Moglix joined the unicorn club when it raised $120 million in its Series E funding that was led by Harvard Management Company and Falcon Edge Capital. By May 17, 2021, the total amount raised by the firm was $220 million, and the valuation had risen to $1 billion, making it the 13th unicorn from India this year. In April 2021, other firms, including Sharechat, GupShup, and Urban Company, also entered the unicorn club.
2. It Has Three Elements in Its Culture
The company’s founder Garg explained that Moglix has three elements in its culture. He described the first one as continuous innovation because they like to explore new things. The second element is execution; hence they strive to be perfect in every way. Finally, he opines people are the most crucial aspect of the firm and drives them towards achieving a greater purpose. According to Garg, if the employees believe that whatever they are working on plays a role in their personal lives, they will be motivated to work harder for more outstanding results.
3. It Launched Credlix in February 2021
In February 2021, Yahoo published that Moglix had announced the launching of Credlix, a supply chain financing solution. Through the platform, Moglix would offer collateral-free working capital solutions to the firm’s suppliers in India. With time, Garg disclosed that the service would extend to the MSMEs in India and enable suppliers to remain operational by offering affordable discounted rates.
4. It Aims to Offer Invoice Discounting Worth Rs 10,000 in the Next Three Years
Garg is an ambitious CEO who wants to solve problems in his home country. Therefore his objective is to unlock cash for the suppliers and facilitate the smooth running of the supply chain. He had disclosed that offline underwriting systems exposed financial lending institutions to more risk; hence they charged higher interests to compensate for nonperforming assets and defaults. Through invoice discounting, Moglix’s supply chain financing solution aimed to offer at least Rs 1,000 crore (USD 92,635,479) in the first year of service. They expect that the credit provided to suppliers will have risen to Rs 10,000 crore within the next three years. By then, even governments and more suppliers outside India will be included.
5. It Was Ranked the Fastest-growing Tech Company in India in 2018
The Deloitte Technology Fast 50 India Program ranks India’s fastest-growing technology companies based on the percentage of revenue growth averaged in the last three years. In 2018, Moglix clinched the top spot thanks to improving their revenue by 120x since 2016. It was closely followed by Razorpay that had grown by 110x, while Cashify came in third with its 70x growth. Cumulatively the top 10 winners had increased from Rs 18 crore (USD 2.46 million) to about Rs500 crore (USD 68.38 million) in 2018.
6. It only engaged Two Institutional Investors in the First Round of Financing
When Garg talked to YourStory, he said that fundraising is an orchestration of various factors such as the domain, investment philosophy of investors you want to engage, and the growth potential of the business. The CEO added that all the factors must align for the financing round to be successful. Therefore, he must have done his homework when he approached only two institutional investors: Accel Venture Partners and Venture Highway. He also engaged individuals, Shailesh Rao and Ratan Tata. Luckily for him, the investors were happy to support his vision and wrote him a check; the first round got him $1.5 million.
7. Its Concept was Discussed over Coffee and Written on Napkins
Many businesses have resulted from people with a vision meeting up for coffee and deciding to take their dream to the next step. Garg is among such entrepreneurs; he met with the investment committee to brainstorm ideas. They must have settled on the B2B platform because then they formulated the concept over coffee. The company’s founder said that the details were written over some napkins facilitating the deal’s close; thus, Moglix was born.
8. What Helped Moglix to Have the Right Investors?
Having the right partner will propel any business to the levels they hope to achieve, and Garg knew this all too well when he searched for investors. Before even pitching to those he deemed worthy of seeing his vision turn into a reality, Garg met with the potential investor around 15 times. During this time, he learned all he could to ensure that he would captivate his audience when he pitched his idea. As a result, when the time for Garg to approach the investors with his pitch came, it was smooth sailing. By then, he had already known those who were passionate enough to see his company succeed.
9. It is a Reverse Brain Drain Company
Young people are always advised to study hard to get lucrative jobs, but most countries cannot afford to employ skilled graduates. Consequently, the youth relocate to other countries searching for greener pastures hence the term “brain drain.” According to Expat, India ranks among the countries with the highest number of youth who move mainly to America. Moglix does the opposite; it brings in skilled people to work in India. The founder even said that he set the example by moving to India from Singapore.
10. Why Moglix Opted to Venture into the Technology Industry
Garg knew that there would be a change in the B2B market, hence establishing Moglix. He explained that for a long time, SMEs had been reluctant to embrace technology. According to Garg, the only way SMEs can achieve success is by taking advantage of technology and leveraging it to drive growth. He said given their huge number of such businesses, India’s economic growth lies in the hands of SMEs and encouraged SMEs to utilize the available technology. With such foresight, the founder knew technology was the best way to go.
11. Its Mission
Attaining the unicorn status is only a start for Moglix. The CEO disclosed that when he founded the company in 2015, he aimed to create a $1 trillion manufacturing economy in India. Since the government is also taking steps towards promoting a healthy environment for the manufacturing sector growth, Moglix’s mission will soon be realized. It is estimated that the manufacturing sector contributes about 17% to its GDP, and it has the potential to get to $1 trillion by 2025.
12. Its Network
According to The Economic Times, the company claims to have at least 500,000 SMEs. It also brags of having 3,000 manufacturing plants not just in India but across the UK, the UAE, and Singapore. Its clients are also major companies like Tata Steel, Unilever, and Air India, all of which use the B2B platform to source their materials.
13. It Became the First Manufacturing Tech Start-Up that Tata Invested In
When Ratan Tata stepped down as the chairman of Tata Group in December 2012, he went on an investing spree. He backed as many start-ups as he could lay his hands on, preferring mainly those that were internet-based. In 2013, the industrialist, together with Tiger Global Management and Nexus Venture Partners, invested Rs. 64.8 crores (USD 6 million) in Lybrate, a US-based healthcare start-up. However, most of the philanthropist’s investment amount remains undisclosed. In 2016, Moglix became the first manufacturing tech start-up to capture Tata’s eye enabling the businessman to add to his e-commerce portfolio. The company was also the sixth that Tata invested in that year, joining Teabox and FirstCry.
14. The Company’s Founder was Pessimistic about Getting Tata to Invest in Moglix
Garg, according to First Post did not expect that Tata would invest in Moglix. However, he had done his background research on the entrepreneur and knee that Tata had a soft spot for the manufacturing and e-commerce sectors. The Moglix team, therefore, figured it was essential to get to him before the market flooded. Since they were the first players in manufacturing tech, it is no surprise that Tata invested in the company.
15. It was Born out of Garg’s Need to Build Alibaba 2.0
Despite Garg being sure that he wanted to explore entrepreneurship and even resigned from his lucrative job at Google Asia, he was unsure what to do. He had three areas to choose from, but the precise idea to pursue was vague. However, he had an awakening when it dawned on him that most companies moved from classified to transaction platforms. He reasoned that such a trend was bound to follow in the B2B sector. Thus, it would be important to have another platform like Alibaba. Consequently, his vision for Alibaba 2.0 was realized through Moglix.
16. Why the Founder Chose to Set up Office in Noida
When Garg decided to venture into the B2B sector, not everything was in place. He had the idea, but the infrastructure was yet to be built. The founder wanted to be based in Delhi but was torn between Noida and Gurugram. Eventually, he opted for Noida because his family friend lived there. The friend operated a welding and manufacturing plant, and it made sense for Garg to set up his office there.
17. Its Commitment to Helping the Fight against COVID-19 Pandemic
India has been fighting the second wave of the pandemic, which has resulted in a drastic need for oxygen concentrators and PPE, medicine, and other medical essentials. Moglix has been at the forefront in helping keep the population safe. It has been supplying companies with medical equipment and, by the first week of May 2021, had distributed over 15 million PPE kits and safety items. The Moglix team suggested a group sharing model in which members of the group would borrow oxygen concentrators for three to seven days should they need them.
18. It Seizes Opportunities
When opportunity knocks, Moglix does not wait around to assess its capability. Instead, the company seizes it as it did when the coronavirus pandemic hit. According to Entrackr, it saw the demand gap in the European and the UK markets thus rushed in to save the day by supplying medical equipment. It moved away from its usual product offering, and the founder remained tight-lipped about which countries the company would be exploring.
19. Its Charitable Efforts
Although Moglix took the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to venture into the UK and European markets where the need for PPEs was greater, it still recognizes the need to give back to the community. Therefore in 2020, it donated 100,000 masks to government hospitals.
20. It Has Faith in Its Employees
Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) is the most common way for employees to own stock in a firm. It is a scheme mainly used as motivation to reward high-performing employees. For instance, Paytm, a highly-valued unicorn in India, announced it would offer Rs250 crore (USD 34.19 million) as ESOPs to the high-performing employees. Moglix, on the other hand, bought stocks worth Rs 10 crore (USD 1.37 million) from about 25 employees in 2019. The plan was also to reward employees holding senior positions, such as the deputy managers.