How to Stop Sourcing From China Without Losing Sleep, Money or Customers - Moglix

If you want to stop manufacturing in China or need to diversify (and need reliable overseas suppliers), look to India. The country is currently rising as a manufacturing hub - even Walmart now spends $10 billion annually in sourcing from India - and may become the preferred alternative to China. But what makes India such a good option for entrepreneurs? We discuss all that on this podcast episode with Yash Mahendra, the Vice President and North American Leader of Moglix, as our guest.

He reveals how you can source from India reliably, affordably and on time regardless of your situation, whether you know little about the Indian market or want custom manufacturing.

Moglix is the largest B2B commerce company in India, with a valuation of $2.6 billion. It has 40 warehouses across India, a network of over 20,000 suppliers and boasts deep connections within 25 manufacturing hubs. We really enjoyed this episode and know that you will find it a great resource. Join us now.

In today’s episode of Harvest Growth Podcast, we’ll cover:

●      How to outsource your manufacturing to India when you know little about Indian suppliers.

●      Ensuring that your preferred manufacturers are not affected by common economic issues (like low access to capital).

●      Getting the desired product quality through ethical, high-quality manufacturing processes from your Indian suppliers.

●      And many more!

To start sourcing from India without friction, visit the U.S. version of the Moglix website at www.zoglix.com and learn more.

To be a guest on our next podcast, contact us today!

Do you have a brand that you’d like to launch or grow? Do you want help from a partner that has successfully launched hundreds of brands totaling over $2 billion in revenues? Visit HarvestGrowth.com and set up a free consultation with us today!

Transcript

Jon LaClare [00:00:00]:

How would you like to manufacture overseas and not have to deal with China? Today, I interview the largest b two b commerce company in India, where you can source almost any b two b product at China prices, but with a more reliable source and with a US based office. If you have custom manufacturing needs, they can also help you find an India based factory that will likely deliver similar costs to China, but without the downfalls of manufacturing in China.

Announcer [00:00:31]:Moglix

Are you looking for new ways to make your sales grow? You've tried other podcasts, but they don't seem to know harvest the growth potential of your product or service as we share stories and strategies that'll make your competitors nervous. Now, here's the host of the Harvest Growth podcast, john LeClaire.

Jon LaClare [00:00:51]:

Welcome back to the show today. I'm really excited to be speaking with Yash Mahendra, who is the vice president and North America leader for a company called Moglix Moglix.com. You can check them out after the show, of course, but we're going to dive in first to explain what is Moglix. And I guarantee if you were from India or had spent any time there, this is a business you would have definitely heard about over there. And it's making great inroads here in the US. In large part because of the work of Yash. And we'll talk about the history of the business, what they do, and how they're growing here in America as well, and this interesting story that they've got. Josh.

Jon LaClare [00:01:31]:

Welcome to the show today.

Yash Mahendra [00:01:33]:

Hey, John. Awesome to be here.

Jon LaClare [00:01:36]:

So if you could tell us a little bit more about the company, what is Moglix? How does it work?

Yash Mahendra [00:01:43]:

Absolutely. So, John, Moglix started in India in 2015, and it's today India's largest b two b commerce company. It's valued at $2.6 billion. It's 2.6 times over unicorn. And we have a very interesting history. We really started at a time when India was looked at as the destination for software and It and shared services, whereas China was looked at as the destination for manufacturing. And our founder had this vision that one day india is going to become great manufacturing super house as well. And he started with that vision.

Yash Mahendra [00:02:29]:

Moglix.com, which today you see as the largest b two b e commerce platform in India, started with this vision of being a one stop shop for anyone in India who is a small or medium enterprise. And they're running a factory operation. And whatever they need, whether it's a belt, a motor, a pump, fasteners, lubricants oils, et cetera, et cetera, they could just log on to Moglixs.com and order it on there and get it all delivered at their doorstep in a very and, you know, something like know was quite visionary at that point in time. If you want to look for a parallel in the US. That would most likely be a Granger or a fasten all. And, yeah, we started with that vision. And really, that was the first product that We Put out there. Now fast forward seven years.

Yash Mahendra [00:03:34]:

Moglix is into a number of different businesses. We Have A financing business where we Solve credit, financing type of problems. We Have A fashion and lifestyle business that predominantly exports outside of India. We have manufacturing as a service business, so on and so forth. Right. But the common theme underlying all of these businesses is to enable smoother, seamless, faster B, two B transactions.

Jon LaClare [00:04:12]:

That's Great. Very well spoken and Explaining why It's been so successful. It's certainly A need for this, and I think especially over the last few years, the knowledge of the need for in the know, speaking to most of our listeners and my experience as well, to find manufacturers that Are not just in China right. Finding other manufacturing opportunities or options outside of there, but still at a cost savings capability. So India is a fantastic place for that. So you guys started at the right time. Maybe the creative ingenious or benefited from it, I don't know. But perfect timing, certainly, for a business like Yours to be growing in India and of course, now here in the US.

Jon LaClare [00:04:53]:

As.

Yash Mahendra [00:04:55]:

Absolutely. That's like the perfect point of departure into talking about what We Are Doing here in the US. Essentially, the first Seven issuers of the Company were focused on what We Like to Call building the financial, technological, and physical Infrastructure for Manufacturing in India. Right. So Today, We Have 40 warehouses across India, a Network of over 20,000 suppliers, connections within 25 manufacturing Hubs within India that are So Deep to the Point that we have teams actively engaging and developing suppliers in each of those hubs. And then, having built this Infrastructure, we thought, why not extend it as a Service to Customers outside of India? And that is really where the North America story comes in. So we started our North America venture right after the pandemic. I think that was the time when a number of companies were thinking about building a China Plus One Strategy, having seen what happens when you don't risk diversify from a country dependence perspective.

Yash Mahendra [00:06:17]:

And today, that's exactly what we're engaged into. We're helping A number of large and medium sized companies figure out their China Plus One strategy and specifically Build their India supply Chain.

Jon LaClare [00:06:33]:

So what are Your revenue streams primarily here in the US. Is it primarily finding and working with manufacturers in India and other places to bring Goods here to the US. From Your.

Yash Mahendra [00:06:46]:

So In Terms of revenue streams, there's a few different businesses that We Run here in the US. And How We started was we really looked at the whole value chain end to end, from A buyer in the US. To a supplier in India, and We Started identifying points of friction. Right. So we think about let's take Walmart as an example, right? So there's a Buyer sitting there doing their research on where to procure certain products from. They want to procure it from ideally multiple sources, but also to each of those sources gives a substantial amount of volume to justify scale. Know it starts from know. Now they need to find the best supplier in India who can meet their purpose.

Yash Mahendra [00:07:48]:

They will issue an RFQ. Then there will be a response from the supplier. Then there will be negotiations and price. Then an order will be placed. And then the product is going to be shipped from India. It's going to take 45 days to reach the US. And then there's going to be customs and so on and so forth, right? And while all this is happening, there's big questions on whether the supplier is mature, whether they have the right processes from a quality perspective, do they have the right working capital financing options available to supply and fulfill such an order? So we started analyzing this whole flow, this whole value chain, and we found several points of friction around which we built different businesses. So one, of course is one revenue stream to answer your question on revenue streams, is of course our commerce offering, which is about rather than go to a supplier directly in India, give us the order directly and let us manage the whole stream end to end.

Yash Mahendra [00:08:52]:

And what we can do as part of that offering is take complete end to end responsibility, deliver everything at your doorstep, ensure 100% quality assurance, ensure that if there are any working capital, et cetera, needs, we fulfill them. And also in India, often we work with a distributed manufacturing sort of paradigm so we can take your order and split it among different factories. Sometimes factory one is doing steps one to three. Factory two is doing steps four to six and stuff like that. So we do all that optimization and engineering on our end so that you get the best price, best quality and fastest delivery. So that really is our commerce offering. And then the second one is our working capital offering, which is essentially saying that okay, you already have a relationship in India and you're pretty happy with this supplier. But then they have working capital issues in the Indian banking system is not very accessible to a medium sized or small enterprise.

Yash Mahendra [00:10:04]:

And we plug in that gap. So today we are doing working capital financing for the supplier base of pretty much every large retailer that sources from India.

Jon LaClare [00:10:22]:

How about custom manufacturing? So if a lot of our listeners are developing their own product, for example, how would they go about working with Moglix to find the right manufacturer or distributed group of manufacturers to create a new product and bring here?

Yash Mahendra [00:10:37]:

I think, I think that's an excellent question. And we are seeing more and more of those queries with the whole ecommerce entrepreneurship thing now really taking off even more. After the Pandemic, I think we've tried to keep that process as simple and seamless as possible. One of the things that people struggle with when they are building a new product is they need someone to talk to and preferably in their time zone. Right? And that has always been a struggle. And for us, with this team that we have in the US. There are always people available to have that conversation. And sometimes it's the process of going back and forth a few times before that exact specification can be put down on paper.

Yash Mahendra [00:11:26]:

So we solve for that first. Then, now that we understand the specifications in detail, we go to our directory of 20,000 suppliers in India and we try to find the best one. Sometimes we go to bigger suppliers because they have the scale, but sometimes we go to smaller ones because they can do a small minimum order quantity. Right, because many times folks like these would like to start with 300, 400, 500 pieces, and that's it. So oftentimes we would go to a smaller manufacturer and get this done. And then our teams in India, they're constantly monitoring the quality. We never charge you for sampling. It's always free.

Yash Mahendra [00:12:16]:

If you want to do one or two or three iterations, we absorb the cost of all that. You only pay us once you've approved the sample for production. We've also been extremely flexible on quantities for the first order because we think of that as an investment in a new and growing business.

Jon LaClare [00:12:40]:

Fantastic. And if a listener wanted to get a hold of you or your organization with these types of questions and start that process for custom manufacturing, would they just go to Mogolix.com for that side as well and call or contact through the website?

Yash Mahendra [00:12:55]:

Yeah, so they can go to Zoglix.com. So that's Zoglix, and that's just the US version of the website that we created. They can go in there and they can submit a query through there. We've also put in our catalog of standard products that we source regularly. And if any of those are of interest, they can submit RFQ from the website itself.

Jon LaClare [00:13:27]:

Fantastic. And we'll include that URL in the show notes as well for any of our listeners that might be driving. Can't write that down, but it's Zoglix with Z zoglix.com. So what are you doing now to grow the business? You guys have been so successful over in India and are already seeing some of that success here in the US. But what have you done as a business to start really drive that growth from a marketing perspective, right?

Yash Mahendra [00:13:52]:

No, absolutely. I think, see, for us, from marketing perspective, from a sales perspective, our big challenge was to identify companies that were really keen on building the India supply chain. Now, the context here is everybody's talking about China plus one, right? And there are many flavors of it. If you just open Wall Street Journal on any given day, you would have people discussing reshoring back to the US. Which absolutely is part of the China plus one strategy. You would see a lot of discussion on Near Shoring to Mexico, which, again, is part of the strategy. And then there's French Shoring, where I think Germany comes in, UK comes in, bringing some manufacturing there. And then there's diversification within India sorry, within Asia, where Southeast Asia and India kind of both come in as well.

Yash Mahendra [00:14:54]:

So I think everybody's talking about it, but I think we've seen that there are certain companies that are really serious about implementing. So, from our perspective, the marketing challenge was, how do we get in front of those companies that are really looking at really translating that high level thinking into goals and KPIs and metrics and really start kind of pushing for that? So some of the things we did, of course, we looked for press releases of any of the companies that put this thing out there. This is all public knowledge, but Walmart famously went out and announced to the world that by 2027, they would take their India sourcing from 3 billion, $10 billion. Amazon did something similar. And so there are a number of companies like that, which obviously we thought would be great for us to target. That's definitely something we did. The second piece that we did from marketing perspective is there's the export database called Panjiva. And this, thankfully, has a record of all the export and import transactions across the world.

Yash Mahendra [00:16:24]:

And we studied that database pretty closely. I think we have a whole analyst team that analyzes that database very closely, and we track transactions from India, United States. And obviously, anyone who is familiar with India and has done business in India is a natural customer for us. Because with them, we can have conversations on addressing their pain points, increasing the flow of goods and services. I think those are the two big things that we did to grow the business.

Jon LaClare [00:17:02]:

Well, Yash, thanks so much for sharing your story about Moglix and Zoglix here in the US. I think it's a great resource in many ways for a lot of our listeners. I encourage you to check out the website again. It's in the show notes. For the US version, go to Zoglix.com. Josh, is there anything I didn't ask you that you think would be helpful for our audience?

Yash Mahendra [00:17:21]:

Absolutely. I think the few things that I would cover is that really, india has gone through this, almost a revolution in the last ten years when it comes to manufacturing. And it's very difficult to witness it unless you've been to the hinterlands. You've been to the interiors, right? Because if you still go to the big cities, they're still driven by services businesses. You'll see big multinationals and the software companies, the It companies, and so on. But there's a silent revolution that's happening in the Interland, where the manufacturing base is. And the government of India has really pushed for this make in India movement, which today has kind of given the confidence to the country's suppliers take on anyone on a global scale. And I attend a lot of trade shows and attend a lot of exhibitions, and it's heartening to see the increasing participation and confidence of Indian suppliers.

Yash Mahendra [00:18:37]:

Maybe, John, that's the last thing I'll say is that if you're someone who's looked at China or other countries as a potential source, try out the new India, and you will be surprised at the kind of maturity and the kind of quality you can source from there.

Jon LaClare [00:18:58]:

And I'll echo what Yash has said. We've had many of our clients either take on a China plus one strategy by adding India into their manufacturing stream, or some that are doing a one minus China strategy right where they're trying to eliminate, for various reasons, China entirely, if that's. Either way, India can be a great resource for manufacturing of many, many different goods and services, of course, but different goods and manufactured across the country, much more so than even five or ten years ago. So I encourage you to check out Zoglix.com. You can learn more, see what might be in their commerce stream already. But if you've got custom manufacturing needs, then reach out to Yosh and his team, and I'm sure they'll be able to help you, potentially to maybe save money, certainly save on or get better quality and better interaction with. As you stated, one of the great benefits is having a team based here in the US. Which is difficult to do with a lot of overseas manufacturing partnerships.

Jon LaClare [00:19:55]:

So that's a fantastic resource to be able to help with the gap right, the distance between here and overseas manufacturing by having a team on the ground here that's US based. Well, Josh, thank you again for your time. This is a lot of fun today.

Yash Mahendra [00:20:08]:

Absolutely. Thank you so much.

Jon LaClare [00:20:10]:

John Fazz for the listeners, go to zoglix.com to learn more. Also, be sure to check out Harvestgrowth.com to see other episodes we've recorded. If you'd like to take a shortcut and learn the process that we've used to launch and grow hundreds of businesses since 2007, download our cheat sheet@harvestgrowthsecretsauce.com. Or you can set up an appointment right from our website to speak directly with a member of the Harvest growth team in a free one on one consultation.

Yash Mahendra [00:20:46]:

You our.