A comprehensive and detailed analysis of the B2B business of Indiamart.com with the help of SWOT model.

1. SWOT Analysis of Indiamart.com Submitted by: Rohit Jain

2. ABOUT INDIAMART.COM:
IndiaMART InterMESH Ltd. is India's largest online B2B marketplace connecting global buyers with approximately 1.5 million suppliers across 50 industries. IndiaMART.com offers products that enable small & medium size businesses generate business leads (online catalogues/store- fronts), establish their credibility (third party verified trust profile) and use business information (finance, news, trade shows, tenders) for their business promotion. On IndiaMART.com, suppliers list their company and products for free and can optionally buy leads to grow their business. Buyers find reliable and competitive suppliers on the site by exploring company and product listings, submitting inquiries to individual sellers, or posting buy requirements to get input from multiple sellers at once. Its existing investors include Intel Capital and Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. IndiaMART.com has won numerous awards and significant nominations over the years
HOW IT WORKS:
BUYERS
•DIRECT ACCESS
•SENDING ENQUIRY
•RECEIVING QUOTES
•FIND NEW PRODUCTS
INDIAMART.COM
•INTERMEDIARY
•ONLINECATALOGS
•STOREFRONTS
•TRADESHOWS
•COMPREHENSIVEADVERTISING
•SOURCINGGUIDE
SELERS
•DIRECTACCESS
•RECEIVEENQUIRIES
•GLOBALPRESENCE
•SUPPLY

3. SWOT ANALYSIS OF INDIAMART.COM
STRENGTHS
 Status in the industry: Indiamart.com is India's largest online B2B marketplace for SME Businesses, pioneering in connecting global buyers with suppliers. It has won numerous awards over the years and India's first organization of its kind to receive an ISO certification.
 Offerings: Has a dynamic offering of products which can be seen as it has over 1 crore products which are listed in over 1 lakh product categories. It also provides a dynamic catalog, trust seal, star supplier and leading suppliers to help the various buyers and sellers to make their transaction on its easy to use interface website. Besides this it also provides many leads and tender to increase business transaction by leaps and bounds.
 Cost advantage: Due to the e-commerce business model both buyers and sellers can reduce cost of B2B transactions by almost 25 percent. This is the major point of difference that has helped it in creating customer loyalty and retention.
 Management team: A very professional team which are present in over 100 cities in India to facilitate its day to day work.
 Geographical spread: They have a global presence. Their spread can be explained by the fact that they have over 1 crore buyers from over 200 countries and over 15 lakh suppliers.
 Financial strengths: India mart is financially sound and has a healthy financial structure enabling it to perform its activities flawlessly.
 Status of the brand: Highly recognized and trusted brand which has an attractive product and service range which lures the customers, thus commanding high brand loyalty.
 Differentiation: The most powerful point in hand of the company is that it provide the customized solution to the customers and is based on the relationship model of marketing.
 Logistics: Indiamart.com has excellent distribution system implemented which helps in proper performance and execution of its online business transaction online.

4. WEAKNESSES
 Specialization: Indiamart.com is a website that is highly decentralized as it does not specialize in any particular industry and caters to too many of them leading it to be a general online marketplace. Thus clients who are highly focused and want to work on websites that specializes on only their industries will avoid it.
 Replicable model: The model on which Indiamart.com is performing its business is highly replicable and this may create it easy for many competitors to enter the market with the same of even better model to attract customers. Thus the company needs to focus on increasing its differentiation and sustain its position in the market.
 Control on clients: Indiamart.com has a very limited control on the action of its clients, making it vulnerable to its competitors for the misconducts and poor performance of its clients during the business transaction.
 Lack of focus on marketing: As far as marketing of its offerings is concerned and its achievement is concerned it has not involved itself in aggressive advertisement which may lead to situation where competitors may take a lead in the future.
 Cluttered offerings: Indiamart.com is into too many product range making it cluttered and which obstruct in optimize its focus on the most important products and services completely.
 Clients: Indiamart.com pays less attention towards the matured clients and has been focusing on creating numerous new clients. Besides, internet penetration in India is still a small fraction of what you would find in several western which stops it from making many more SME customers in rural areas.
 Technology: The technology used by them is getting obsolete very quickly so they need to focus on upgrading their processes and information technology to stay ahead in the game in the time to come.

5. OPPORTUNITIES
 Status in the industry: Being a constantly growing company Indiamart.com can enter into many more countries to enhance its global presence as well as in other sectors.
 Government policies: Indiamart.com can grow exponentially because of the present government policy prevailing in the country. The Union Budget 2014 has brought golden opportunity for growth as Government has allocated a fund amount of Rs. 10,000 crores for start-up SMEs and has also announced the formation of a Venture Capital fund to extend financial assistance in the form of equity, quasi-equity and risk-capital. Besides, the government has also set up a ‘Technology Development Fund’ to focus on easy flow of finance for the SME space - would enable expansion, keeping away the financial constraints and nudge in the right direction for the prospective entrepreneurs located in rural India.
 Acceptance of product- The existing buyers and sellers have a positive perception of the various products and services that the company offers thus can lead to greater growth of their transaction with Indiamart.com in the time to come.
 State of the economy: The current state of the economy is that of being a buoyant and growing economy which is a positive sign for growth. India has a vast potential market, which the company can explore on a larger scale. Other factors that also display the positivity are the fact that internet penetration and Personal disposable income on the rise
 Digitalization: The increase in the digitalization has led to increased number of online users and online transaction which means more chances of acquiring new customers who will need an online marketplace for their transaction.
THREATS
 State of competition: Many competitors are present giving a more close on heels and aggressive competition biggest being Tradeindia.com. Having a global presence has led to a situation that the company is facing competition not only from not only local players but also from many globally renounced company like Alibaba.com etc.

6.  State of industry: The online business marketing is still not properly developed and lack on many aspects to carry on the business smoothly. In India, logistics, courier services, internet penetration etc. require lots of improvement.
 Online threats: Cybercrimes and its problems like internet fraud, hacking, online data security, payment frauds and lack of trust of customers on internet transaction has made a huge problems to many e-commerce players and may lead to problematic situation on the time to come.
 State of economy: The Indian economy is not a stable one it keeps on facing turbulence and the market sentiment is always changing. Thus the volume of business transactions keeps on showing variation on a huge scale which can become a major problem in the time to come.
Thus, to sum up we can say that INDIAMART.COM is in the driving seat of its industry and can become even more if it takes proper advantage of its internal strengths and external opportunity; & take care of the various internal weaknesses and external threat.