For OfBusiness, small is big

IT'S BEEN ABOUT a decade since Asish Mohapatra, Bhuvan Gupta, Ruchi Kalra, Vasant Sridhar and Nitin Jain set out to build a B2B platform that would supply materials to small businesses.

- URVI MALVANIA & SHOBHANA SUBRAMANIAN

It also wanted to trade in these products.

Over the years, OfBusiness acquired a clutch of manufacturing and processing units, which have been merged into a main entity, ahead of the firm's Initial Public Offering slated for end-2025.

The production of materials in-house has driven down costs giving OfBusiness an edge in the spaces that it operates - construction and industrial steel, finished goods, agri-products, chemicals and polymers. And also lifted its profits. Operating profits rose to ₹666 crore in FY24 from ₹435 crore in FY23 pushing up net profits to ₹325 crore from ₹280 crore.

Today, transactions on the platform average one lakh a month; materials bought by customers could be sourced or made at its own units. "This contributes the bulk of our profits," says co-founder and CSO Vasant Sridhar. In an unwritten rule, every order must be margin positive. As Sridhar explains, in a high-repeat order business there is the risk of losses continuing. "If you make a loss in one order, you cannot suddenly increase the price and so the losses will rise," he points out.