During their stints with their family business, 29-year-old twin brothers Akshay and Akash Hegde had witnessed multiple pain points, including procurement issues like sub-optimal pricing, delivery service levels and streamlined supply, all of which posed production challenges. When the duo was trying to grow the market for their goods, they saw an opportunity to bring down the cost of distribution, while driving volumes, realising higher margins and improving cash cycles. Riding the opportunity, in 2016, Akshay and Akash came up with the idea of ShakeDeal, a B2B e-commerce marketplace for industrial goods, raw materials and supplies, office and housekeeping supplies and corporate gifting. ShakeDeal, a B2B e-commerce platform, solves problems in the procurement and distribution space. The company is digitising and optimising procurement in India through the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and blockchain technologies. Akshay and Akash Hegde, based in Bengaluru, soon roped in their friend Santhosh Reddy, 34, as a co-founder and VP, technology. Reddy, a technology geek, is an entrepreneur with experience in building technology products and solutions. As a design thinking enthusiast, with a love for everything related to technology, art and aesthetic design, Reddy has more than 13 years of experience working for Mindtree and various Fortune 500 clients. As a consultant, he has helped many start-ups build their end-to-end products in the field of finance, video streaming, IoT, and the entertainment and e-commerce sectors. At ShakeDeal, he builds products and solutions to solve the various pain points in the B2B sector. Digital adoption On the financial front, ShakeDeal is backed by the US based private equity firm Vora Ventures. “We believe that the B2B market for digitising supply chains in India is poised for explosive growth, supported by recent developments, where companies are planning to expand or shift their manufacturing to India (due to geopolitical tensions),” says Mahendra Vora, chairman, Vora Ventures. ShakeDeal is now close to Rs100 crore annualised revenue run rate and operates in a marketplace that uses a combination of drop-shipping and just-in-time (JIT) fulfilment models. It helps companies in streamlining the supply of procurement spend and digitising their procure-to-pay (p2p) process. With over 500,000 SKUs and over 4,000-plus vendors, ShakeDeal provides a one-stop solution for consolidated indirect procurement spend across a long tail portfolio. It has over 200-plus leading large enterprises across sectors, such as automotive, engineering, energy, infrastructure, manufacturing, FMCG, pharma, etc, as procurement partners. Moglix seems to be the closest competitor, though ShakeDeal has a lot more product offerings that differentiates it with a more holistic approach. ShakeDeal is associated with over 10,000 SMEs and more than 250 large enterprises and provides solutions for large and medium enterprises. Some of its customers are the Adani group, Vedanta group, Tata group, Nayara Energy, Bharat Heavy Electricals, Shell, Sabic, Walmart-Flipkart, to name a few. “ShakeDeal is our trustworthy partner for all types of electrical equipment and hand tools. It offers superior service quality and hassle-free refunds,” says Gopi Krishna, manager, purchase, Powermech Projects.
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Akash, Santhosh and Akshay: solving various pain points
