Power2SME

The core value proposition: SMEs get supplier-grade bulk pricing on raw materials plus access to working capital without collateral.

Power2SME pools/aggregates purchase demand from many SMEs to negotiate better prices than any single SME could get alone.

Power2SME's customer base is India's SMEs in manufacturing, especially those buying raw materials like steel, chemicals and polymers.

By the time of its Series E round, Power2SME had a large registered base of SMEs across 14 Indian states.

Power2SME manages its relationships with SME customers through its own CRM suite, which the company upgraded specifically to strengthen demand forecasting, reporting, and multichannel engagement.

Because SME owners and their chartered accountants use the platform differently, Power2SME built a hierarchy-based login system giving each stakeholder type tailored, traceable self-service access on the website.

Power2SME's own website brands the company as India's first SME buying club.

Beyond the online platform, Power2SME runs on-ground outreach events pan-India to engage SMEs directly.

Power2SME operates three linked platforms covering raw-material procurement, SME finance (FinanSME), and MRO consumables (SMEShops).

FinanSME connects SMEs with banks/NBFCs to provide working-capital finance at better terms for their Power2SME purchases.

Power2SME's business runs on its own request-for-quote (RFQ) and order-fulfilment technology platform, where SME buyers check product availability, pricing and financing options and raise purchase requests online.

A dedicated business-intelligence team builds and maintains data marts and data warehouses using Tableau, powering the company's pricing, demand-forecasting and decision-making.

Power2SME's distributed workforce, about 230 people spread across 16 cities, underpins its demand-aggregation model, which pools orders from small businesses into large orders placed with suppliers.

In 2021 Power2SME moved its technology infrastructure to AWS, with further plans to adopt cloud-native tools and migrate its data centers to cloud architecture.

Power2SME sources from established large suppliers/vendors across steel and other raw material categories.

IFC's investment came with an advisory mandate to help Power2SME add more banking partners for SME working capital.

Power2SME's core revenue stream is a margin-based model: it buys raw materials and industrial goods from manufacturers and resells them to SME buyers at a markup. Goods sales made up 99% of total revenue in FY2023.

Beyond margin on goods sold, Power2SME earns commissions from the financial services it arranges for SME buyers (working-capital lending facilitation) plus fees for logistics/delivery services.