Infra.Market's Aaditya Sharda is not motivated by money. He wants to create history
Infra.Market's massive business-to-retail play makes it one of the most exciting startups to watch out for. And co-founder Aaditya Sharda wants to make it an enduring company
Image: Vikas Chandra Pureti for Forbes India
Exciting is boring for Aaditya Sharda. So a jump in Infra.Market’s valuation from a billion dollars in March to $2.5 billion in August is not exciting for the co-founder of the largest B2B online infra procurement platform in India. Even a staggering rise in revenue—from ₹12.5 crore in FY17 to ₹1,242 crore in FY21—is mundane for the first-generation entrepreneur who, along with friend Souvik Sengupta, started Infra.Market in 2016. For the 36-year-old, the fact that his startup happens to be one of the rare profitable unicorns in India is also nothing much to talk about. “What excites me,” he reveals, “is something super exciting.”
Over the last 12 months, the Infra.Market juggernaut has only gathered steam. It has expanded beyond Maharashtra and made inroads into Telangana, Karnataka, Kochi, and recently forayed into North India, including Delhi-NCR. The firm now has 25 exclusive franchisee stores across 10 cities; over 1,500 distributors and 5,000 retailer touchpoints and more than 620 dealer-owned and dealer-operated stores across 50 cities and towns. “LED lights and fans are the two new categories that we have now entered into,” he says, underlining his widening private label strategy.
Infra.Market’s backers are impressed. “I do not think there is any player in India with private labels at this scale,” says Prashanth Prakash, founding partner of Accel. Underlining that a multi-category play is more prevalent in FMCG, and not in infra, the venture capitalist reckons that Infra.Market is breaking into new territory, and setting a new paradigm on how multi-category brands can be built.
Sharda, for his part, wants to build an enduring company. Conventionally, the word tycoon has strong financial connotation attached to it. “I do not believe in paper valuation,” he says, adding that he is not into business for the lure of money. “It does not excite me,” he says, stressing that he still draws a salary and cannot afford a fancy lifestyle. The co-founder comes up with a new meaning for a tycoon: Somebody excelling in whatever he or she is doing. Five years into the journey, and Infra.Market has disrupted the construction and infrastructure industry. “We just want to focus on excellence. The rest is merely an outcome,” says the new-age, self-made tycoon.
Last Updated :
January 05, 22 07:03:55 PM IST