Online selling holds good advantages: Viren Mehta

Industrial supply chain of spare parts is disordered and messy, at BookMyParts, we have created industrial products online store to help manufacturing sector to source spare parts online. This will help factories to buy parts conveniently and quickly saving their time, efforts and money, says Viren Mehta, CEO, BookMyParts.com.

Online booking of textile spares and parts. Has its time come in India already? What are your views on the global and Indian experiences of this phenomenon.

There is no better time than now for online purchase of textiles spare parts in India. Countries like China, USA and some part of Europe is already buying spare parts online. There are definite advantages of buying spare parts online. First of all, as you know, machine spare parts trade in India is highly chaotic and disordered which resulted into high cost, lack of transparency, lower productivity and inefficient supply chain.

Over and above, for textile industry in India, there are many imported machines bought from China, Taiwan, Korea, etc. since last several years, now several factories are facing issues of maintenance of machinery and procurement of spare parts. Many a times, spare parts are not available so there are production related problems, delay, sometime textile factories have to pay high cost for procurement of these parts, parts have to be stocked because of its uncertain availability. There is no enough information available on how to procure imported textiles machine spare parts and so on.

We at BookMyParts.com have identified the problems faced by textiles and nonwoven industry in India two and a half years back and started working towards redefining the supply chain of machine spare parts for textiles and many other industries.

Now talking about your company, when did this begin and how effective it has been as far as textile industry is concerned through your portal?

It was all started in late 2016-17, when we launched our platform and introduced textile machinery spare parts in the Indian market. Initially, we found people were skeptical but eventually they joined and found a lot of value in buying spare parts online. First of all, they got what they were looking for, they found price is less, now it is available on BookMyParts.com – they no longer have to stock this and block their working capital and space.

We have more than 1,500 customers in short span of time and it’s growing every day, many companies who have started with specific textiles machinery are buying other stuff including belts, bearings, tools and hardware and other items. We have all product range within textiles available including spinning, weaving and entire range of nonwoven machinery spare parts.

Our work received some recognition. BookMyParts.com has won Digital India Excellence Award from IIM Lucknow at PAN IIM World Management Conference and Best Ecommerce company in early growth category by Aeonian Business Awards by Small Enterprise Media and Deloitte.

What are the great advantages of online selling of parts?

Companies who opt for online selling are getting good advantages. Online selling is new avenue for sales for those companies who have been selling spare parts through conventional route and channels. It helps them to get in touch with customers directly and remove non value-added elements from supply chain thereby bring down the cost. There are fewer elements within supply chain like manufacturer/distributor directly selling it to customer through BookMyParts online platform. So entire supply chain becomes robust, responsible and efficient. BookMyParts.com takes care of logistics so customers can track their deliveries of spare parts and plan for production accordingly. We now intend to digitise our customers procurement plan entirely through our platform so we take care of procurement of spare parts on their behalf and they can focus on their core strength and customers acquisition.

Which are the segments in textile machinery that has proved to very successful in online orders in your portal? How often are repeat orders? Your comments.

Weaving, nonwoven, spinning are some of the major segments within the textile industry that have proved successful in online orders on BookMyParts.com – frequency of purchase depends on spare parts and its usability. There are parts in weaving and nonwoven sector where parts are ordered every three to five months along with other peripheral items. There are repeat orders and there are quick orders wherein if machine is damaged and not working due to some problem and part required immediately, we give them express service to delivery parts within 24 hours at any location in India.

What is the modus operandi of procuring parts and components? How do you think it benefits manufacturers?

BookMyParts.com mostly invites sellers those who are either manufacturers or distributors of machine spare parts to list their products online with every possible details including price etc. factories and manufacturers who look for these spare parts visit BookMyParts.com online check their requirements, description, specification, sometime communicate with through chat mode and place order and our logistics partner collects it from supplier and deliver it to buyer anywhere in India.

For manufacturers of spare parts, they get the opportunity to sell their products across anywhere without any risk as they are assured about the payment. Apart from their conventional sales channel, this direct dealing with customers helps them to get additional business.

Has this wave spawned spurious sellers too? What is the status of the competition at present?

Not really. We follow very stringent on boarding process for suppliers therefore so far we have not faced the problems of spurious sellers. BookMyParts.com deal into actual machine spare parts unlike other competitors who deal into industrial furniture, accessories, off the shelf industrial items, tools and hardware, etc. The major product portfolio of BookMyParts.com is real machine spare parts which is distinctively unique with no competition at all.

How do you see the future prospects for this online market by specialised marketers like yours?

Online procurement of machine spare parts is having a huge potential to grow so there is a definite growth prospects for online marketers. Conventional practices of business needs to be replaced with online and modern technology, tools and new paradigms of online marketing and promotion.