SAN Angels, Indian Angel Network, and Hyderabad Angels, along with several other individual angels also participated. The funding round was initiated by CENSIE Capital Partners, who acted as the investment bank for the transaction.

The company plans to use 25% of the funds towards technology enhancement, 35% to supply enhancement, and the remaining 45% will be utilized for demand generation.

Beyobo addresses the challenges of product discovery and sourcing in the offline retail market by providing efficient solutions for discovering imported products. The B2B cross-border market is valued at a massive $730 billion. With a focus on beauty & personal care, consumer electronics, and fashion accessories, BEYOBO has gained significant traction, serving over 35,000+ retailers, and generating $11.59 million in revenue in FY23. The company plans to expand into additional categories and incorporate predictive analysis and personalized cataloguing features to enhance the customer experience.

Beyobo’s founders include Anil Agrawal (Co-founder & CEO), a second-generation entrepreneur with over 18 years of cross-border business experience. Anil specializes in offline B2B markets, successfully launching the private label brand Whitecherry and achieving remarkable e-commerce success as the largest seller at Paytm Mall for cross-border products. Shikha Agarwal (Co-founder) brings extensive experience in traveling to interior regions of major Asian countries and working with international trade organizations. Kunal Jain (Co-founder) has over 18 years of experience in sales and distribution, having held managerial positions in organizations like Just Buy Live, Videocon, and ICON group.

Vikram Ramasubramanian, Partner, Inflection Point Ventures, said “The market  for international Brands has seen a sharp rise due to deeper penetration of social media which has removed proverbial boundaries between large metros and tier 2 and 3 cities. The consumers are on a look out for premium and genuine international brands and Beyobo is helping such brands making inroads and opening new markets for them. We believe B2B online commerce is just beginning to unfold in India and it will see many new and disruptive models with Beyobo taking the lead.”

BEYOBO operates at a significant scale with an impressive traction of Rs 11 Cr MRR and maintains a positive contribution margin. Additionally, they are catering to large enterprises and e-commerce players to help in sourcing international products for them.

BEYOBO, fuelled by 20 years of domain experience, driven by seasoned entrepreneurs. With a successful PMF achieved, the company has established deep integration with suppliers. In a fragmented import market worth $720 billion with a CAGR of 12%, BEYOBO’s business model is replicable in over 100 countries. Their product features patent-applied technology for small import automation, a supplier panel for convenient catalogue uploads, and a retailer mobile app. Operating on a 10% margin, which can be increased twofold, BEYOBO follows a zero-inventory model and generates revenue through subscriptions and services.

Anil Agarwal, Co-founder & CEO, Beyobo says, “As CEO of BEYOBO, I’ve seen B2C businesses dominate the last decade, but now we focus on digitalizing B2B operations. Cross-border transactions pose challenges, so we’ve developed three engines for non-linear growth. Our deep understanding of major Asian countries empowers us, and we’re ready to embrace the promising road ahead.  The IPV team and their investors prove to be not just valuable in terms of providing funds, but also offer indispensable support in terms of ideating & brainstorming, providing real time feedback and sharing business connects. Moreover, Anil confidently asserts that BEYOBO has already laid out a blueprint for building a multibillion-dollar company.”

BEYOBO exhibits an impressive array of achievements, from securing two patents for cutting-edge smart technology solutions to assembling a formidable team with vast cross-border trade experience. Their compelling USPs, including no minimum order limit and customer-friendly return policies, have garnered significant attention. With a remarkable annual run-rate revenue of over $13 million and positive CM-2 margins, BEYOBO is firmly on the path to success. Moreover, the company is poised to seize a vast market opportunity, collaborating with millions of offline and digital sellers and numerous large enterprises for transactions worth over $150 billion.

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The increasing presence of women as entrepreneurs has led to the change in the demographic characteristics of the business and economic growth of the country. Women-owned businesses enterprises are playing a prominent role in society inspiring others and generating more employment opportunities in the country.

There is a need for sustainable growth of women entrepreneurs, to promote balanced growth in the country. By 2022 more than 1 billion women are set to join the economy as leaders, producers, employers, employees, and entrepreneurs. 

The contribution of women to the economy is at the highest point and keeps growing as we speak. Various researches have shown that women-led businesses are outperforming their peers. Businesses, in the past few decades, have been realizing the importance of women in the top leadership to drive sustainable financial returns.

Women entrepreneurs are becoming the face of almost all sectors of the economy and the traditionally male-dominated B2B space is one such sector where women’s participation has been increasing.

Four of such women entrepreneurs who are changing the B2B landscape in the country. 

 1. Smiti Bhatt Deorah, Co-Founder and COO, Advantage Club.

Smiti Bhatt Deorah is a young and enthusiastic entrepreneur who co-founded the Advantage club with Sourabh Deorah. She has worked with Microsoft in the past and has done her master’s in Computer Science from the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA).

With substantial experience in B2B relationship building and account management, Smiti launched Advantage Club with Sourabh in 2016. The company is an employee-centric organization and offers companies curated deals, rewards, and offers from more than 200 brands.

For Smiti, it all began while working at Microsoft when she felt valued and rewarded by the employee perks and benefits she received. Smiti and Sourabh together recognized the potential employee rewards platforms had and came back to start India’s first employee reward and recognition platform. 

Today the company is profitable and has over 6000 companies as clients, including Café Coffee Day, Samsung, Lifestyle, PNB Home Loans, Max Healthcare, and several others. Personalized rewards offered under Advantage Club are a measure that helps companies to improve employee satisfaction and engagement.

2. Upasana Taku, Co-Founder, and COO, Mobikwik.

Upasana, a Standford University alumni, co-founded digital payments and financial services startup Mobikwik with Bipin Preet Singh back in 2009 to simplify payments in India. The company started as an e-wallet service and today has expanded in three business lines – consumer payments, payment gateway, and financial services. 

Before starting a venture of her own Upasana headed many high impact projects for companies like HSBC and PayPal and gained immense experience in payment systems. She is one of the most recognized faces in the fintech space in the country.

3. Rashi Aggarwal, Co-Founder, and COO, Zypp.

Rashi Aggarwal co-founded Zypp India’s 1st electric bike and e- Scooter sharing app and platform in 2017 with Akash Gupta. This dockless eco-friendly bike-sharing platform started as a B2C business, and recently it has shifted focus towards the B2B sector with clients ranging from food delivery business to e-commerce establishments. Previously a fashion entrepreneur, this is the second entrepreneurial venture undertaken by Rashi who dreams of a cleaner and carbon-neutral world.

4. Ankiti Bose, Co-Founder, Zilingo.

Mumbai based, Ankiti Bose, is the first Indian female co-founder and CEO of a unicorn status startup. She has been featured in Forbes Asia 30 Under 30 list in 2018 and Fortune’s 40 Under 40 along with Bloomberg 50 in 2019. Her achievements come at the back of Zilingo, a technology and commerce platform in the fashion industry that offers services for players across the fashion supply chain.

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CustomerSuccessBox, an online platform which applies Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to automate customer on-boarding, product usage analysis and user communication in B2B SaaS companies, has raised $1 million in pre-Series A funding, led by pi Ventures with participation from Axilor Ventures.

The funding will be used to drive growth and product innovation.

CustomerSuccessBox is a customer success platform, which applies Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to automate customer onboarding, product usage analysis and user communication. Thus, enabling success managers to deliver a superior customer onboarding experience, retain customers, drive, upsell and improve Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) and Life-time Value (LTV) for SaaS businesses.

CustomerSuccessBox was founded in 2016 by Puneet Kataria (Founder & CEO) and Amritpal Singh (Co-founder & CTO). The platform is being used by success managers at global B2B software companies including XebiaLabs, WizIQ, Synup and WoowUp. Its patent pending technology has processed over 30 million data points from over 100,000 end users to calculate Account Health Scores.

Kataria said: “B2B SaaS businesses bleed, churn and struggle with customer retention. Customer churn is the biggest blocker of growth, it’s like trying fill up a leaky bucket. B2B SaaS and subscription businesses cannot continue to operate with the old ‘reactive’ support model. CustomerSuccessBox was built from a clear need for a solution which could deliver ‘proactive’ customer success.”

Abishek Surendran, Partner, pi Ventures, added: “The focus of SaaS companies has shifted from customer acquisition to reducing churn. The founding team’s extensive understanding of the customer success space has helped build a world class product which we have no doubt can help SaaS companies retain customers. The product is a natural fit for AI and ML to automatically calculate customer health.”

pi Ventures is India’s first Applied Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning & IoT focused early stage venture fund, founded by Manish Singhal (Ex Co-founder & CEO, LetsVenture and prominent angel investor) and UmakantSoni (Ex Director India, Science Inc & Co-founder AI BOT company). pi Ventures focuses on healthcare, logistics, retail, fintech and enterprise sectors and has so far invested in Zenatix (data-driven energy efficiency), SigTuple (revolutionising global healthcare space through data driven intelligence), NIRAMAI (non-invasive, non-touch, non-radiation approach to detect breast cancer) and ten3T (medical grade wearable device).

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