This Third Gen Entrepreneur is Disrupting the B2B Construction Space He has successfully created an organised market for new and used construction and mining equipment.

As a third generation entrepreneur, he grew up in the infrastructure equipment financing environment, as the family was into this business. Meet Anant Raj Kanoria, son of Sunil Kanoria, Vice-Chairman, The Srei Group. In 1989, Sunil and his brother Hemant embarked on a new journey and started Srei, which has now become one of India's largest holistic infrastructure institutions with $ 5.5 billion of consolidated assets under its management. While the infrastructure sector has been under stress for last few years, Srei has been resilient to the uncertain and challenging environment bringing operational excellence in its businesses and maintaining its leadership position in the infrastructure and equipment financing space.

However, when Anant came back to India after graduation, he identified a lack of easier access to equipment and other related services in the country. To address this he conceived a unique idea of providing people with higher transparency on the equipment availability and right resources to deliver world class infrastructure on time; along with competitive financing option. This triggered the creation of iQuippo - "a disruptive created in the B2B construction equipment and infrastructure space," as he puts in.

iQuippo is a revolution in the construction equipment and infrastructure space and in OEM category with transactions now happening digitally. It has also successfully created an organised market for new and used construction and mining equipment.

Creating a marketplace to connect people

Anant has been steering operations for iQuippo since May 2017 before the company got finally registered under the companies' act in November 2017. "The business model is very simple: we are creating a marketplace and connecting people. We want to move the risk from the person to the asset. This can be delivered through transparency and increased information on equipment," asserted Anant.

The digital marketplace, a first-of-its-kind, will allow owners to list their construction and equipment services, negotiate with buyers, close terms of the deal, generate digital contracts/invoices, and get real-time payments. The platform offers total solutions for all types of construction and mining equipment and will also provide value added services like asset certification, valuation, parking, maintenance, logistics, spare parts and manpower. Sellers can upload asset details and images and transact with buyers instantly.

The platform does not only have a market in India but in other developing countries like Africa, where OEMs might not have a reach and users of the equipment do not know what they need. The platform will help them address their needs at competitive prices and provide transparent information.

Objective behind going online

The main objective for Anant to go online was easier access and lower distribution costs. Also with technology, online integration of different partners and vendors are very easy today. "Transactions become transparent and information is openly available. Also in a B2B business and for a complex decision-making process you need a traditional channel to serve the customer which is why we have the traditional platform as well," he maintained.

Unique differentiator

According to Anant there is no such platform providing financing for equipment along with all the other services. "We have got a technology to aggregate financing from different FIs and the customer has the choice to choose from. We are also providing FIs with entire loan management solutions online thereby reducing their management time and cost and even on collections. This will lead to more efficient loan management for all FIs and also reducing frauds between banks and FIs," shared Anant who is also partnering with all the major OEMs to offer promotions and products.

Investments

iQuippo is now building a robust team on the technology side and has tied up with different start-ups and technology companies for the services on the platform. These include established companies in the US to start-up's in India.

"We have made a lot of investment in the technology side to promote transactions and have done a GMV of about 1500Cr for equipment sales and valuation services and about 500Crs of loans in the last four months since we launched the service.

Taking the model to global level

Anant has a vision of taking the platform to a global level and has already started to get bidders at the auctions from outside India. "But we want to first grow our transactions and business volumes and then venture to other markets globally. Especially we have seen a lot of demand in Africa for the platform," he notified.