indiamarkets.com to invest $10 million in brick-and-mortar infrastructure

indiamarkets.com, the B2B online exchange which covers 26 vertical industry segments has entered into a revenue sharing arrangement with global rating agency Dun & Bradstreet to avail of the latter’s rating services for the SME segment which the portal addresses. The alliance will enable the portal to assess the business credentials and risk profile of the participants.

The portal also plans to invest $10 million this year in ramping up its brick-and-mortar infrastructure. The portal is in negotiations with a host of offline businesses to strengthen its B2B services according to Rohan Ajila, CEO, indiamarkets.com. Ajila indicated that these partners ranged from financial institutions to logistics providers.

Dun and Bradstreet will be deploying a credit rating tool, which is the first of its kind, on indiamarkets. D&B will be using its India’s Indicative Risk Score (IRS) to rate participants on indiamarkets.

The portal is also actively working towards shoring up its brick-and-mortar presence which constitutes the second rung in the portal’s business plan and which finally involves the transition of the portal into an ASP which will offer services on demand to the SME sector.

“The adoption of this sector to the Net will be a progressional one and not an exponential one and eventually we will have to function as an ASP offering ERP solutions to a sector which does not invest very easily in technology,” explains Ajila.