How it started
History
Founded in 1996 by two cousins Dinesh Agarwal and Brijesh Agrawal, IndiaMART began as a B2B directory and website developer for SMEs. At that time, India had only 15,000 internet users.
Due to Indian rupee's appreciation between 2005 and 2007 and the impact of the 2008–09 US recession, the company decided to pivot the focus from export-oriented business to India-focused B2B market and raised funding from The Times Group and Intel Capital.
In March 2016, it raised Series C funding from Amadeus Capital Partners and Quona Capital to scale up the activities of IndiaMART and Tolexo. In 2016, IndiaMART invested in ProcMart.
In June 2018, IndiaMART filled draft papers with SEBI to raise ₹600 crore through IPO and list on NSE and BSE. In July 2019, IndiaMART went public via an IPO of ₹474 crore. IndiaMART became the first online B2B marketplace to go public in India.
As of 2019, IndiaMART was the largest Indian B2B marketplace for businesses with about 60% market share, according to KPMG.
From Wikipedia’s article on IndiaMART, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2