Moglix Founder Rahul Garg on building a B2B commerce solution with the ease and comfort of B2C

It all started with an entrepreneurial bug bit Rahul Garg so strong that he decided to quit his job to get the ball rolling. In 2015, the idea of Moglix, a simple, one-stop, completely digitised B2B platform that offered doorstep delivery to manufacturing sectors and infrastructure companies seemed way ahead of its time.

But fixing India’s manufacturing issues was a problem close to Rahul's heart. This desire remains the motivation behind Moglix’s work even today.

Moglix started with the right-to-play and right-to-win dimensions. Unlike B2C, B2B does not directly connect with the customers. So, you need a certain level of credibility—“got to earn the right to play before you start to get into the zone of right to win”, as Rahul puts it.

"And that’s how we went about to build a minimum supply, then go to the demand and build the demand. Then build the supply, then go build the demand. So, then you start the flywheel. I mean, you’re going back and forth on building one versus the other," says Rahul

Difference between B2B and B2C marketplaces

In both marketplaces, the core concepts remain the same in many shapes and forms, but the overall operations of the B2B consumer marketplace differ in every single value prop that you create.

Starting from the consumer, a consumer is not a single decision-maker like in B2C. Typically, B2B is a multi-decision maker for large organisations, which means the decisions you make and their implications create more of an impact on a professional level for people.

"If you bought the wrong t-shirt and you got the return, probably there’s no downside per se to it. But, if you’ve got a wrong bearing and the plant blew up. So, there are ramifications in your professional job. So, I think that first, the psychology changes," Rahul explains.

Then the personas of the TG (target group) and their buying behaviour change drastically from a typical B2C. In general, the B2B TG is 35-65-year-olds. The set of people who are completely different from the usual 15-45-year-old B2C TG in their buying behaviour.

Plus, it's not just marketing led, it's more sales led. There's no incentivising them to buy a product if they don't need it. If they need a product they need to buy it ASAP. So, it's mostly about making the right product available at the right time in a very predictable way. 

While starting a B2B business

The entrepreneurial journey in itself is a long journey and not a linear one at that. So, believing that and adopting it needs an intrinsic motivation that will keep you on the course and keep you motivated throughout.

Rahul suggests having the answers to these questions before starting - why do you want to be an entrepreneur? And then, how do you select the space? Why should you select the space? And then are you motivated about doing that space for the next 10 years?

And when it comes to opportunities, they are phenomenally high in India. The underdeveloped physical infrastructures and physical things hold a lot of promise.

"And I do see that there is an over-indexing of the percentage of entrepreneurs trying to do another SaaS platform. But, I actually think that larger opportunities in the country are there. And are something which is untapped and probably only available to Indian entrepreneurs, sometimes not even available to global companies," says Rahul.

Advice for budding entrepreneurs

Starting for the right reasons is important. Things can take longer time than you predict and during that time, many start finding faults in the problem they set out to solve. But that's not the case.

"So you have to make sure that you don’t get bogged down by many of those because sometimes you are just breaking your head and you’re like, “What the fuck did I do?” But that’s the opportunity and if you hustle through it, you’ll probably build a phenomenal company," Rahul advises.

You can listen to the episode here

YouTube link

Time Stamps:

01:00 - B2B Commerce Needs to Transform like B2C commerce

05:30 - Opportunity to Become a Disruptor Globally

14:00 - Find What Customers Don’t Want To Do

18:00 - How B2B Marketplaces Differ from B2C Marketplaces

25:00 - The China Plus One Strategy & Opportunity for India

31:00 - How to Evaluate a B2B Opportunity as an Entrepreneur