Sanjiv Khandelwal, Founder, XSTOK.com
Sanjiv Khandelwal is the founder of XSTOK.com. He studied IB at Manila, Philippines and went on to study Bachelors of Science and Business Administration at the Boston University, USA. He drew majority of his education from his passions. He began with a venture in the textile industry and subsequently started a business in 2006 which offered solutions for e-auctions, digital marketing, Local based Services over the Wi-Fi, mobile apps and solutions for B2B businesses. He is currently focused on the huge opportunity in the textile industry with his startup XSTOK.com.
In conversation with Dominic Rebello, Sanjiv, who is open to experiences and absorbs what he finds useful from people he meets, reveals how in just a year, XSTOK.com has conducted over 700 auctions and transactions with 12,000 registered buyers and 750 sellers of surplus Fabrics, Denims, Home Textiles, Apparels and Yarns.
What `is the idea behind XSTOK.com?
XSTOK.com is an online B2B marketplace for wholesale and surplus stocks of Fabrics, Denims, Home Textiles, Apparels and Yarns.
In the textile industry, the extra units or ‘Surplus Stock’, is created by almost all mills due to various reasons from buffer or cancellations. India produces close to Rs. 65,000 crore worth of surplus stock every year. In most cases, the surplus produce is sold by the mills to the local agents, who in turn sell in smaller units to interested parties/ buyers. The products however, are not available in a democratic fashion and margins can be as high as 65% before it reaches the end-user.
XSTOK.com aims to solve this by offering more choices and better prices and enabling purchase through its mobile app and website.
Why do you think traditional business like textile will adopt change?
Business advantage and ease of purchase are the two primary reasons that we believe will drive the traditional textile sector to adopt to new systems.
India is now the second largest market for smart phones in the world and data connectivity is becoming ubiquitous. While the impact is evident in the B2C ecommerce, we are confident that with the right product and service offerings, the B2B players will adopt to the change as well.
At XSTOK, we have 750 mills from across India and 12,000 registered buyers. Selling on XSTOK.com enables a mill to get access to a larger base of buyers, without deploying extra resources, which in turn results in better prices for their products.
For the buyers, more choices at a single platform, transparent prices, assured quality of products and assured delivery time are a big advantage. We are confident of changing the buying behavior of the industry in due course.
How did you raise capital to start the business?
We started XSTOK.com in January 2015 with our personal savings (Founder Sanjiv Khandelwal and Co-founder Mihir Shah). The platform, web and app, was officially launched to public in June 2015. We raised funding through angel investors in September 2015 who are an elite group of professionals heading consulting, stock broking and logistics companies such as Jeetu Panjabi (ex Capital Group), Manish Chokshi (Asian Paints), Anupam Mittal (People Group), Vineet Suchanti (Keynote Capital) and Oliphans Capital.
Please share some business metrics?
XSTOK.com at present has onboarded 750+ premium suppliers, including Arvind, Welspun, Nahar, Oswal Denim, D’Décor, Trident and Mafatlal, to name a few. The average size of a single transaction is Rs 3 lakh and can go upto Rs 1 crore.
We offer credit facility to our buyers of upto Rs. 1 crore, through Lendingkart and another finance partner. From our 12,000 registered buyers at present, we aim to have 30,000 registrations by the end of 2017 and endeavor to be the preferred choice for sourcing and trading of textiles in India.
Where do you see yourself five years down the road?
We hope to capture about 10% of the total textile surplus and ready market in 5 years and look to remove inefficiencies in other industries eventually.