Moglix – a packaging aggregator brings procurement efficiency

Rahul Garg founded Moglix in 2015 to bring ease, speed, convenience and services to the b2b industrial segments. The Noida-based organization is a b2b eCommerce startup for providing services for procurement of industrial products such as MRO (maintenance, repair, and operations). Backed by equity investors such as Ratan Tata, Tiger Global, IFC, Sequoia, and Accel. The company has raised US$ 470 million (approximately Rs 3,562 crore) and became a ‘unicorn’ in 2020. With more than 1,000 employees, the company claims its current valuation is US$ 2.6 billion (approximately Rs 19,577 crore). Although Moglix began as an industrial product material procurement and MRO company, in 2019 it diversified to the packaging materials vertical.

As a contract aggregator and supplier of packaging materials since 2019, the company works for brands such as Lenskart, Comesum, Zomato, Swiggy, IRCTC, Rebel Foods, and several others. In packaging supply chain procurement its profitability comes from its expertise in leveraging its volume purchasing with the use of digitalization, vendor consolidation, product and pricing uniformity, benchmarking, and new product development.

The company brokers and consolidates almost every type of packaging used in segments such as food and beverages, pharmaceuticals, automotive, eCommerce, electronics, home furnishing and textile, logistics and personal care. It offers primary, secondary and tertiary packaging made of all materials – paper, plastics and films, metal or glass. Packaging types and formats include food trays, pet bottles and jars, laminates, sachets, pouches, kraft sealable bags, lamitubes, VCI bags, labels and stickers, blister, thermoform trays, glass bottles, shrink sleeves, corrugated sheets and boxes, monocartons, polybags, stretch films, paper bags, plastic crates, pp fluted boxes, seals, barcodes and bopp tapes.

Moglix’s onsite delivery of sustainable SKUs such as paper bags, compostable bags, molded trays, bagasse trays, cotton carry bags, and bespoke biodegradable packaging are provided to more than 25,000 pin codes. The company inventory management stretches across its 35 warehouses across the country.

Food and beverages, eCommerce, ePharma, and logistics are the company’s main customers and it claims that its packaging materials fulfil more than 70% of the eCommerce industry’s packaging demands. It provides big manufacturers across sectors with source-to-site packaging supply chain solutions. For perishables’ and short shelf life products it is able to prevent pilferage, spoilage, and wear and tear across domestic and international trade transit routes.

With new product development and design, Moglix offers brand owners optimized sustainability solutions including sustainable packaging. The company says the critical lever is not only to identify sustainable materials but to develop a robust supply chain that can provide packaging components made from sustainable materials at the right cost and quality. This saves raw material and improves aesthetics while keeping the circular economy in mind.

The company’s USP is its ability to provide complete packaging and supply chain solutions in one place. The client does not need to go to another platform to find the component. Customers are provided with access to a buyer portal where they can track their current order along with re-ordering.

Shobhit Goel, senior vice-president of Packaging and CapEx at Moglix, sees a bright future in aggregation, “The Indian packaging industry will see a paradigm shift towards an organized aggregator business model, which will act as a tailwind for the industry and drive the next wave of operational efficiency.”

The company’s business seems scalable as Goel adds, “We operate as an entire ecosystem of packaging supplies right from raw material to the finished product. We have recently kicked off operations in the UAE and are planning to tap the global market.”