Our platform will bring machine learning to masses: Vaibhav Dabhade

Instituted in 2011, Anchanto is an e-commerce fulfilment and technology start-up headquartered in Singapore with an Indian subsidiary in Pune having an employee base of 50 (comprising software developers, sales and customer support). Largely catering to customers in South East Asia, the company has raised five funding rounds from investors in Singapore, UK, Japan, etc., and is set to close another round in April 2017. Vaibhav Dabhade, founder and chief executive officer, Anchanto speaks with Ashish K Tiwari about the company's India business and future plans.

Could you briefly tell us about the business?

Anchanto is an e-commerce enabler company primarily operating in the e-commerce selling and fulfilment space for both business-to-business (b2b) and business-to-consumer (b2c) space. We provide a software platform to brands, sellers, e-commerce companies and third-party logistics (3PL) to kick-start and operate e-commerce business. Our software basically helps sellers/distributors to list and sell products across multiple e-marketplaces both locally and cross-border, that's one part of our business. In the second part, we help (through our SaaS platform) conventional large warehousing or real estate companies to build and run e-commerce logistics/fulfilment centres.

Who are your clients in India?

We started selling in India from January 2017 and currently have close to 1,000 clients here of which 90% are sellers, brands, distributors, etc. The balance 10% is logistics firms like DTDC and a few regional players. By default, our software is integrated with Oracle Retail, SAP, Microsoft Retail and so on.

What's India's contribution to your overall business?

Currently, it's less than 5% for us. We believe that by 2019, approximately 50% will come from India and majority of it coming from the logistics business vertical. By then, the vendor to logistics business ratio will also change to 60:40 versus 90:10 today.

Any new products in the pipeline?

We are developing something called 'Intelligent Inventory Platform' that will help mid-tier sellers plan their inventory using technology. Our software is developed on Amazon Cloud, which has a machine learning platform. For such sellers, we will feed their data into Amazon's machine learning platform which will learn, predict and give back data that will help the seller in inventory planning across e-marketplaces on e-marketplaces like Amazon, Flipkart or Snapdeal. We will make it available to sellers at a very accessible price. Our platform will bring machine learning to masses. Another adjacent offering we are working on is a point of sale called SelluSeller that will help small sellers digitise their inventory in the physical store and push it on e-marketplaces.

I understand you are raising another round of funding soon

We have had five funding rounds already and the sixth one will close in this month itself as we are at the final stage of documentation. The funding is largely led by Japanese investors along with two of Southeast Asia's largest (having revenues of over $2 billion) retailers and distributors, who interestingly are also our clients. While the Japanese investors have a strategic stake with over 35%, others have invested because they don't want to miss the opportunity and be part of our growth. So whenever we plan an exit or an IPO our clients will also benefit out of it.

So this is Series C round? How much money are you raising?

We follow a very clear fund-raising timeline. So Series C will happen in November this year. The funding currently in the works is between Series B and C. To avoid playing the valuation game, we also don't reveal figures be it the amount of money raised from investors or for that matter the kind of revenues being clocked by the company.

The listing, will it also happen in Singapore?

Most of the large technology companies prefer listing in the US. So we will also take the same approach when time comes.