Amid pandemic TradeIndia hires 700 as revenue jumps over 35 pc during lockdown

Hiring by TradeIndia, which had revenue of only Rs 127 crore last fiscal - up 23 per cent over FY19, took place even as many companies fired their employees or forced salary cuts on them following the outbreak of COVID-19.

The nearly 25-year-old B2B platform already employs over 1,700 and has over 50,000 registered users and 3.1 lakh daily visitors, which grew by over 150 per cent during the lockdown. TradeIndia Chief Operating Officer Sandip Chhetri told PTI that the portal has been getting 5,000 new registrations daily since the lockdowns. Of the total 5.5 million users, 50,000 are paid customers - their main revenue source - who pay for displaying their products and price on the portal.

Of the total customers, 20 per cent are from overseas, mostly the US, followed by the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Europe, he said. On hiring, he said when many companies were firing their employees, they hired as many as 700 digital marketing consultants. It already has 1,700 on our rolls. These new hires are not on the roles, but work a variable pay based on commission.

"Our revenue grew 23 per cent to Rs 127 crore in FY20 and have been growing over 35 per cent month-on-month so far this fiscal. We hope to close the year at that level or even higher as our listing as well as paid customer base have been growing very fast since the pandemic shut down," Chhetri said. From an online traffic perspective, the same has been clipping at 150 per cent on a monthly basis during the past six months to 3.10 lakh visitors, while consumer demand for the products displayed on the portal was growing over 56 per cent.

The bootstrapped company was begun as an offline B2B platform for SME buyers and sellers in 1996 by Bikky Khosla, who owns 95 per cent of the stock. Infocom Network, headquartered in New Delhi, is the holding company of TradeIndia. Last month the company had said that Khosla was planning to divest a part of his 95 per cent holding in Tradeindia to raise USD 10-15 million from investors over the next two quarters.

With over 5.5 million registered users, 20 per cent of them from abroad, and over 3.7 million sellers, Tradeindia is the second-largest B2B platform for buyers and sellers from the small business space after Indiamart promoted by Dinesh Agarwal. It features over 90,000 product categories.