Payment Service For First Time Customers

Business are no longer local. For a whole-seller or a manufacturer, it was previously the physical visits that were necessary to sell their products across different places. You have to move physically or you have to advertise so that your customer notices you and orders you. Not anymore. Internet age started in India somewhere in the last decade of the last century. But it really picked up pace in this age of Mobile. First it were net cafes and then it was mobile where people surfed the internet. Then came the 3G which really moved people from internet cafes to the mobile. And the real game changer was the Jio launching 4G. It catapulted India to a big user base of internet. 

While there were e-commerce companies in the first decade of this century which pulled funds electronically from individuals or retail customers, it is not slowly coming into B2B too. The internet age has started a string of companies which list different businesses on their website - free or paid. The front-runners in them are the Indiamart and the Tradeindia. They focus mainly on Manufacturers. There is another one called as the JustDial. This is also a business listing service but it's focus is rather on shops and traders. They have a good database for each cities and their people have scanned the city to list many shops. They also have different categories. So, if a business wants to look for a distributor, they can look at the JustDial. If distributors want to look for a manufacturer, they can look at Indiamart and Tradeindia. 

Though this considerably eases the finding part, the other part still remains a problem. Trust. The manufacturer needs to be liberal to supply goods on credit or the trader should trust  the manufacturer to pay in advance. Only then a deal or a business can happen. This space has now been addressed by Indiamart through their service. Businesses can now list prices or their products on Indiamart and traders can buy them. If they want to negotiate or discuss with supplier, they can call them. After that, the businesses can actually generate a proforma invoice with goods details and send a link as sms or email to the trader so that the payment can be done online. The payment is through Indiamart and this service is only for a paid customer of Indiamart (I guess). So, the manufacturer is genuine and trader can trust the manufacturer. This can really be a Gamechanger.