From a Pen Worth Rs.5 to Branded Stationery, WeSuppliers Stock itAll

WeSuppliers is an e-commerce site, selling office and school stationery. It offers a wide range of stationary of renowned Indian and international brands such as Reynolds, Camlin, Montex, Matrix, Paperkraft, Kangaro, Steadtler (Germany), Maped(France) and Rotering (Germany). As of now, WeSuppliers have four major categories, viz., Office Stationery, School Stationery, Computer Stationery and Writing.

Based out Delhi, WeSuppliers has been operational since Feb 2012. Founder Maninder Sains believes that the mantra of their business model is to bring comfort in the lives of people. “We are committed to deliver a product with a cost as low as Rs 5. We aim to provide unmatched service, great product offerings at affordable prices, with an option to try our services with the minimum transaction amount possible,” he says.

Though Margins vary from product to product and company to company, their average margin lies in the range of 20-25%.

During their pre-launch analysis, Maninder was amazed to see that a lot of web searches were being done for online stationary purchasing in India. Hence, he decided to team up with internet stalwarts such as Google and Facebook for advertising. However, as per the trend observed on their website, more than 60% of the traffic has been organic. They receive orders from various parts of India, their typical customers being hostlers and people who do not have access to good stationery shops nearby, people who love to shop online, and also people who are looking for brands like Maped and Staedtler and cannot find one in the vicinity.

In terms of procurement, they directly deal with brands like Solo, Maped, Bilt Matrix and lot more. “We are getting queries from large corporates. As of now we are focusing on retail customers, however in the near future, we will definitely tie up with corporate,” Maninder adds.

Starting up:

Maninder Sains has previously worked with companies like GE and HSBC for over 5 years. During his years of employment, he realized the need of having an online stationary store which could cater to the stationary requirements of people, ranging from a school kid to an adult to an office. He realized the huge opportunity in this still untapped sector. Thus, he decided to come up with an online Stationery store. This is how he co-founded WeSuppliers with Manpreet Singh, who has a stint of over 2 year with Bluestar India Pvt Ltd. While working with various clients at remote sites, Manpreet also realized the opportunity to provide stationary at their doorstep, thus bringing comfort to their lives.

Currently, a team of only two, they have invested Rs. 5 lakhs in this startup and for 30% of most selling items they do real time stocking.

Their initial challenges while starting up were tying up with vendors and managing logistics. Now, they are looking forward to add more product categories and brands to their existing range of offerings.

“There are similar market players, who have entered with the same concept, and we welcome them. WeSuppliers looks at this as an opportunity, because the market is too big,” Maninder concludes.