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Matexnet to go global, tie up with two firms

Vishwanath Kulkarni

BANGALORE, July 16

MATEXNET, the online material stock exchange to trade surplus stocks, is planning to go global. The company is in the process of tying up with two foreign companies and plans to invest about Rs. 20 crores over the next two years.

Mr. S. Jagan Vasan, Managing Director, Matexnet, said as part of the tie-up, the two foreign companies based in the US and Netherlands have expressed an interest to pick up small stakes in Matexnet.

Declining to name the companies, Mr. Vasan said the two companies with a strong domain in the manufacturing sector were in similar lines of business. The tie up would help Matexnet to create a ``buyer zone,'' a global network of buyers which is expected to be functional by October. ``The buyers' zone would enable the Indian manufacturing companies to outsource their requirements from outside India easily. The companies can also utilise the buyers' network to sell off their inventory to buyers abroad,'' he said.

Matexnet is also changing its focus from being an infomediary alone to a total solutions provider. ``We are planning to offer value-added services and are in the process of tying up with logistics, finance, legal, insurance, payment and technology compan ies and rating agencies as alliance partners,'' he said.

Matexnet which had an initial round of venture capital funding from ICF Ventures, is planning to go in for its second round of funding. ``A few VCs have already shown interest and have come forward to help us in meeting the funding requirements to scale up and expand our operations,'' he said.

The company has a membership base of about 120 blue chip companies and 2000 small and medium companies mainly from the manufacturing sector. Matexnet has a database of over two lakh inventory listings which is growing at around 4 per cent per month. The value of the inventory listings exceeds Rs. 300 crores. Its clientele among others includes Greaves, HMT, Mico, Fuller India, Balmer Lawrie, NGEF, BHEL, ITI, Chemical Specialities and Ucal Machine Tools.

The company is also increasing geographic coverage throughout the country by opening new offices in a year's time. It also aims to use the current platform of domain expertise, systems and the business model to scale up operations and is targeting a netw ork of 10,000 users by the year-end. In order to scale up the operations which is to be driven by platform and technology, the company is in talks with Ariba and Commerz One, Mr. Vasan said.