‘Moglix’ may sound like an unusual name for a company. But if you suspect that it has been derived from the iconic character in Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book, you will have scored ten on ten. The founder of the Noida-headquartered start-up, Moglix, dealing with regular supplies to enterprises, infrastructure projects and now also supplying chain financing (basically B2B retail play) is clear in his mind: his business should eventually have the universal appeal of a character like Mowgli.

“It had taken me more than two months to finalise this name. I was looking for a name which can readily establish our brand identity. Alibaba and Google are great brand names. And everybody knows Mowgli,”

Rahul Garg, CEO & Founder, Moglix

Since the beginning of its journey in 2015, the company has been in the news for having the legendary Ratan Tata supporting it individually as an investor which Garg says has been a huge blessing.

As Moglix grows in age, its future leaps is getting higher. The company recently saw its valuation more than doubling as it touched $2.6 billion after Series F funding around the end of January when it raised a further $250 million (a total of $470 million has been raised since its inception). Starting mainly with tools and equipment suppliers to industries and manufacturing units, the company has significantly broadened its portfolio over the years and today boasts of over 700,000 SKUs in 50-plus categories across MRO, packaging and infrastructure. It has over 5 lakh SME units as part of its ecosystem and it manages 35 warehouses across the country.

“70-80 per cent of our backend logistics requirements is taken care of by our own team. We partner with players outside of the company mainly for long-haul transportation,”

Garg adds

Claiming complete ownership of the source-to-site supply chain for EPC construction projects and business, it serves some of the largest infrastructure and construction companies, energy companies, and oil & gas producers.

“We decided to launch the vertical in 2020 because of the demand from customers. Most infrastructure sites are geographically dispersed and in non-metro locations. The firms working in those locations want reliable partners for the regular needs of their engineering and design teams working on site,”

Abheet Dwivedi, Director (Infra & PSU), Moglix

Meanwhile in July last year, Moglix also ventured in a new direction to further endear itself with manufacturing customers when it acquired Vendaxo (founded in 2017), an e-commerce platform for the buying and selling of used machinery. According to a company note, Vendaxo is a B2B e-commerce platform that provides used machinery liquidation solutions to MSMEs and large manufacturing enterprises such as Siemens, Arvind India, Marico, Raymond, and Torrent Pharma. India’s used machinery market is estimated to be worth close to Rs64,000 crore.