India’s e-auction pioneer Mjunction executes over 30,000 e-auctions a year for over 150 prominent companies, including the government and PSUs. Its diversified products include steel, coal, old power plants or old aircraft. Its e-auction platforms are STQC accredited. Mjunction management claims that they have no real competition due to diverse service portfolios. MSTC is the only competitor for steel auction. 

 Zero hassles

“We have been procuring materials from Mjunction for the past 15 years,” says Vishal Singhal, partner, Shiva Steel Syndicate. “We mainly procure HR materials being auctioned by SAIL and TATA Steel. The Mjunction team has been working tirelessly to make sure zero hassles, while procuring materials – be it with regards to bidding in auction, payments to be made or lifting of the material from various yards. The process remains smooth”.

A few months back, pedestrians and motorists witnessed an unusual sight of a trailer truck carrying a scrapped Air India 319 Airbus from the Kolkata airport. That non-flying aircraft was auctioned by Mjunction and Air India received three times more than its estimated scrap value. The buyer was Pandian S. of Nano Aviation India, a Chennai-based, DGCA-approved MRO (maintenance repairing operation) company, which won the bid for Rs2.5 crore. “This is the first time I bought an aircraft through e-auction. Mjunction’s e-auction is transparent and flawless. We bought this to sell the aircraft’s usable spare parts primarily for export market,” says Pandian, founder of the company. Mjunction has sold three such aircraft from Kolkata airport.

Many would not be aware that Mjunction was chosen by BCCI to auction the high stakes IPL media rights for the 2023-27 cycles. Since inception, the IPL has been synonymous with growth – the e-auction touching a new high with Rs48,390 crore value for five years. Talking about the IPL, Varma says, “Transparency based on technology solution was the key for IPL’s e-auction. It is a high-value, high-visibility brand, commanding a global audience. Every move was monitored and analysed maintaining the confidentiality.” 

“IPL was a prestigious project for us,” Mukherjee explains. “Our team worked relentlessly to keep the process seamless and failsafe.” In 2018, BCCI adopted the e-auction route for all non-IPL international and domestic matches for the first time. That auction was also conducted by Mjunction. 

Over the last two decades, Mjunction has disrupted the supply chain of various industrial commodities providing e-auctions for commodities like steel, coal and tea, etc, through digital transformation. It is now raising the bar with the launch of B2B e-marketplace services platforms, to bring a superior and seamless digital trading experience. Through the e-marketplaces, it brings together buyers, sellers, financers, logistic service providers, insurance agencies and warehouses on digital platforms, ensuring efficiency, cost saving, and quality products to the stakeholders.

Rivexa, a B2B e-commerce platform, is the most recently launched Mjunction venture and went live in October 2023. This will enable buyers across the globe to source made-to-order goods from Indian suppliers. In the first phase, the state-of-the-art platform will house two categories – industrial goods and apparels & home textiles.

One-stop destination

Varma takes pride in the company’s platform, and says: “Rivexa is backed by the trust and reliability that Mjunction has built over the years. It will be the one-stop destination for Indian suppliers for discovery of global buyers, contracting, execution and fulfilment. On the other hand, it will offer global buyers curated Indian suppliers, with track record on quality, reliability and timeliness, finance, and security & confidentiality of transactions.” 

This is for MSMEs to sell their products to international buyers without any trading house or agents in between. As of now, it has over 1,000 MSMEs on board. The company believes such a platform would help Indian MSMEs. Also, ‘Make in India’ is a necessity and that can be achieved only if Indian MSMEs are exposed. The company has e-transacted more than Rs2 lakh crore in 2022-23 alone and nearly 300,000 entities have been transacted across its platforms. “We are looking at Rivexa as one of our growth engines. And, by 2027-28, Rivexa alone will be as big as all Mjunction’s services put together at that point of time,” Varma insists.

The e-procurement platform mjPRO made by the company is used by businesses to procure. The cloud-based platform comes with wide configurability which ensures that every unique need of users is met; it is secure, scalable, modular and easy to use. It addresses key concerns of organisations such as access to new and credible suppliers, analytics and insights for decision-making, convenience of usage and integration with ERP systems. It can accommodate complex RFQ terms, multiple currencies and diverse evaluation criteria. It also provides access to registered vendors after due validation with procurement analytics and configurable dashboards that provide insights for timely decision making.

“We are now seamlessly transferring purchase requisition from our ERP to mjPRO. mjPRO is generating and transmitting RFQs without our intervention/involvement. The vendors are also quoting on mjPRO. This has enabled Auto Comparative Statements making the system fast, reliable, and transparent. We intend to grow our relations with mjPRO for streamlining our processes further to enable PR to Pay,” compliments Vivek Sanghi, chief procurement officer, Texmaco Rail & Engineering. 

Today, the entire procurement of two state governments – Bihar and Chhattisgarh – is done on this platform, the value of which could go up to Rs50,000 crore. “We have developed the software, we maintain, customise, host it for them and they pay us fees as per usage,” says Mukherjee.

One category, which has done well and is growing fast is the sale of obsolete plants and machinery. Some companies want to realise a fair value for these, but they don’t know of a buyer who would need this particular asset. So, Mjunction comes into the picture and builds a big buyer base of recyclers and refurbishers. 

There are also several non-operational power plants left as scrapped. Mjunction inspects them and reaches out to potential buyers and sends the catalogue to them. “We arrange physical visits for these buyers to the defunct plants, we collect their data, take their suggestions, we make sure everyone meets the eligibility criteria – our role therefore is to help this companies to get right customers, better price, get space cleared on time,” Varma explains. Last year, Mjunction sold about five plants and machineries – each in excess of Rs100 crore.

“Our customer-centric approach led to the innovation of an e-commerce platform,” says Arun Misra, executive director, Vedanta. “We partnered with Mjunction to build Vedanta Metal Bazaar as a one-stop solution for customers by combining digital innovation and e-commerce excellence. To enhance the customer journey, plans include further collaboration by leveraging artificial intelligence to help customers interact better with Vedanta Metal Bazaar by prioritising essential aspects such as transparency, efficiency, data availability, and accessibility to elevate customer experience even further.”

Foray into new domains

Mjunction continues to enter the new domains for its growth plan. The company also ventured into India’s first Tea e-Marketplace transforming the tea supply chain in the country. This initiative was launched in association with the Tea Board of India. It is a first-of-a-kind, all-encompassing online platform, on self-service mode. It provides end-to-end service to the tea community, with facilities like free state-of-the-art warehouse, quality assessment, financial assistance and logistics support. 

This innovative e-marketplace makes buying and selling of Assam tea extremely easy. It reduces the sales cycle time of tea trading by 50 per cent, making freshly produced tea available in the market in the shortest possible time. The e-Marketplace brings together a large number of buyers and sellers across the country on one platform, along with many budding tea entrepreneurs. Offerings like rent-free storage in proximity to the tea gardens, sale of FSSAI compliant tea, cost advantages to buyers and sellers and fair market price discovery have attracted both buyers and sellers to this comprehensive e-marketplace.

“We have moved up the business through efficiency, and a great deal of emphasis on the customers' need,” says Chatterjee. The company spend 20 per cent of its revenue on technology. Mjunction, a non-listed entity, has recorded GMV (gross merchandise value) of Rs2,35,945 crore in 2022-23, as against Rs1,98,459 crore in 2021-22. 

“All our investments have been met through internal accruals,” affirms Varma, commenting on the listing. “We have no debt. So far, the need to bring in external capital has not been there.” Our vision is to be the leading digital commerce platform of choice for over one million businesses worldwide, powering over $100 billion of commerce annually”.

Mjunction has demonstrated its ability to move with the time. With immense brand value and established markets, the company will continue to retain its leadership position.