Harsh Sarohi

Top 50 leaders shaping the gig economy
Harsh Sarohi
Head of Tech-Sr. Vp IT
TradeIndia

TradeIndia.com is India´s largest B2B portal with over 10 million registered users. The marketplace serves as a platform to buy make in India products, trade with Indian manufacturers, suppliers, exporters and service providers and help grow their business globally.

TradeIndia: The Origin Story

In 1996, Delhi entrepreneur Bikky Khosla envisioned empowering Indian businesses to transcend borders and compete globally through the emerging power of the Internet. He founded TradeIndia, India's pioneering online B2B marketplace. TradeIndia started as a simple directory or Yellow Pages for exporters moving online as the internet usage grew worldwide. In 2001, Bikky's elder brother, Vinod Khosla, the renowned venture capitalist, invested $1.7 million in Infocom Network Ltd., the parent company of TradeIndia. 

Headquartered in New Delhi, TradeIndia provides a global platform for Indian exporters and importers, offering services including online catalogs, trade alerts, and credit reports. With over 90,000 product categories, TradeIndia has become India's largest B2B marketplace, catering to over 10.8 million users. 

A majority of businesses connected with TradeIndia hire gig workers for their operations, making TradeIndia the de-facto B2B platform for connecting organizations staffed with gig workers in the fourth largest economy in the world. 

Building India’s Largest B2B Marketplace

TradeIndia's journey from a simple online directory in 1996 to India's largest B2B marketplace is a testament to its adaptability and commitment to empowering businesses. Initially connecting a handful of businesses, TradeIndia now boasts a vast network of over ten million users, encompassing manufacturers, exporters, importers, and service providers. Key services from the TradeIndia marketplace include:

Online business catalogs for showcasing products/services: Comprehensive online catalogs allowing businesses to showcase their products and services to a global audience.

DialB2B for connecting buyers and sellers: A platform that facilitates direct connections between buyers and sellers through voice, video, and chat channels.

Trade Alerts for latest industry updates: Customized alerts and notifications keeping businesses informed about the latest trends, news, and developments in their respective industries.

Call Me Free Service for receiving inquiries: A service that enables businesses to receive inquiries from potential customers without incurring any charges.

Credit reports on businesses: Detailed credit reports and financial assessments of businesses to aid in making informed decisions.

Trade leads generation: A service that provides businesses with qualified leads and potential customers based on their specific requirements.

Advertising services for businesses: A range of advertising solutions, including banner ads, sponsored listings, and email marketing campaigns, to help businesses promote their offerings.

Consultancy services across domains: Expert consultancy services spanning various domains, such as legal, taxation, marketing, and business strategy.

Logistics and transportation services: End-to-end logistics and transportation solutions to streamline the movement of goods and materials.

Financial services such as accounting, auditing, etc.: Comprehensive financial services, including accounting, auditing, taxation, and financial planning, to support businesses in managing their finances effectively.

Scaling TradeIndia’s Operations for The Next Phase of Growth

Harsh is driving the next phase of growth with technology for scaling TradeIndia’s operations.  Harsh moved the core platform to microservices to allow greater flexibility in integrating and rolling out new capabilities for the field sales team. 

TradeIndia’s field workfoce is comprised of hundreds of sellers who visit businesses in all major cities in India to educate them on various services offered by TradeIndia platform.  TradeIndia’s customer base expanded over years with the sales team ramping up to meet the demand. TradeIndia’s executive team needed greater visibility into the daily operations of field sellers to understand how customer visits logged in CRM, correlated with the in-person visits to the customers throughout the day.  

We were looking for the real-time visibility of our field sales team’s visits throughout the day to improve productivity.  HyperTrack fit the bill for integrating location intelligence into our field sales tech stack

TradeIndia’s location intelligence solution allows sales team to check-in when they reach the customer location for the meeting and check-out when they are done with the visit.  The process is automated with a geo-fence established around the customer location. With real-time visibility into the location of every field seller, TradeIndia leadership can assign new inbound customer leads to the nearby seller, minimizing the commute and maximizing the number of visits in a day.

TradeIndia’s Vision for Transforming B2B Landscape

With technology and innovation as enablers, TradeIndia endeavours to help their users reinvent businesses to compete and win, with digitization at the core. TradeIndia is the only marketplace offering 360° digital marketing solutions to micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) to help them be tech-enabled.

Harsh is leveraging the location data for field sales and rolling out solution to non-technical users so they can query and get insights from the data without help from IT.  This empowers the entire TradeIndia organization to serve MSMEs more efficiently.

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