One-stop platform for excess inventory

The Indian excess inventory market is estimated at US $30 billion across verticals and is an area of opportunity that remains to be explored. “Overstock is a perennial problem affecting all industries across sectors. A platform like Excess2sell is the need of the hour especially for sellers who need to make decisions on unburdening their ageing inventory, to free up the locked up capital,” says Rajan Sharma, Founder & CEO, Excess2Sell.com.

The startup is co-founded by Anant Chaturvedi, Navinder Chauhan and Rajan Sharma. “All three of us previously in our professional careers were in leadership positions at Gigabyte, Digisol, Digilite, D-Link and iRevo, which were traditional product companies. We had a fair idea about the problems arising from the excess, overstock, ageing inventory. The ideation process consumed almost three to four months before we could clearly identify the why, how and where for creating a solid business model,” states Sharma.

Development of the online platform began in March 2016 and the first transaction occurred at the end of August 2016 when Excess2Sell.com successfully helped liquidate a 3G Adapter inventory of one of the national distributors of this product. “We began with a small team of three co-workers and today we are twenty plus team. Currently we are connected with almost 169,000 B2B enterprises with more than 16,000 registered partners on our online platform,” mentions Sharma, adding that November 2017 set a milestone in their journey when they crossed the lifetime liquidation of US $1 million. Post GST implementation the business model has gained more momentum with transactions taking place seamlessly across states. According to Sharma, Excess2sell.com has become a one-stop platform for vendors, manufacturers, dealers, wholesalers and distributors for offering their unsold – overstock, excess, ageing inventory to buyers across various verticals. One of the biggest advantages Excess2Sell.com offers to both sellers and buyers is that they can transact confidentially, anonymously and neutrally.

Effective platform

A technology enabled platform like Excess2Sell.com helps sellers who couldn’t openly announce that they are stuck with excess and ageing inventory which blocked the working capital. Sharma indicates that previously, such inventory was routed through a limited, location constrained, unorganised medium. This made the process of liquidation both difficult and time consuming, which led to the inventory ageing further, adding to the seller’s woes. “With Excess2Sell.com, sellers can now anonymously declare their overstock to a larger buyer base and buyers can avail the discount offered by the seller without a worry,” he states, adding that Excess2Sell.com takes responsibility for the quality of product purchased through it, which assures the buyer in case of any issues with the product.

At Excess2sell.com the online ‘dashboard’ made available to its users i.e. buyers and sellers, functions like a mini-ERP system. From here they can control all their inputs including inventory, specifications, prices, listing time, etc., autonomously and independently. “With a background in channel sales, product management and marketing background we understood the channels, distributors and dealers’ mind-set very well. We knew their pain-points and how their cash-flow suffers while holding onto unsold, excess, ageing inventories. Additionally, they cannot even publicise this fact which further reduces their chances to liquidate the overstock and have to keep it confidential to avoid losses. We cannot stress enough on the amount of difference Excess2Sell.com makes with CAN – abbreviated for ‘Confidential, Anonymous, Neutral’ for its registered users while transacting,” mentions Sharma.

Marketing strategy

Excess2sell.com has a three-pronged marketing strategy which focuses on: –

i) The current B2B business database which the in-house sales team connects and attends to

ii) Managing and working with registered partners with focused account management to ensure that they are updated on all seller offers

iii) Digital marketing for creating brand buzz and traction for Excess2sell by deploying various online tools.

Speaking about the significance of channel partners, Sharma says, “We firmly believe our channel partners are the best and most important investors in our business. We work closely with them and reiterate our ideas with our channels. This helps us receive immediate and prompt real-time feedback. Channel build-up is the key for any startup to ensure long-term credibility with paying partners.”

Future plans

Regarding future plans, he says “We are focused on building up India’s best excess inventory platform and plan to explore cross-border opportunities soon. Excess2sell.com is a platform with universal need and appeal which can be implemented especially in markets like South East Asia, Middle East, North and South Africa since these are similar in channel structures to India.”

In 2019, the major focus for the company will be on technology build-up. Sharma informs that they have already are working on the roadmap to introduce new features for offering integration, collating nearest buyer and seller prospects and possibility of e-auction on some very large inventories. “Our Technology Director and his team are ensuring fast build up and execution of various partner friendly modules within the current platform. We also plan to launch our B2B mobile app by end of this year,” he says, informing further that they are also looking to add at least two-three new verticals in 2019 that will include apparels, electrical and lighting and auto parts. These new segments will contribute significantly to the expansion plans in terms of revenue and growth. The business development and marketing teams will also be strengthened to ensure enlarged footprint to be closer to the target audience, which is buyers and sellers.