Amongst India’s leading textile trading companies – Damodar Menon International or DMI – as it is popularly known as, has over the years been bridging the gap between the suppliers and buyers of textiles by offering fabric and yarn solutions. Backed by decades of experience and expertise of handling the entire textile chain, DMI is now all set to launch a user-friendly textile web portal for greige yarns and greige knitted fabric, which will act as an online platform, bringing together various suppliers and buyers of yarn ensuring real-time responses. In an exclusive interaction with Apparel Online, Ramesh Menon, Managing Director of the company, talks about this one-of-a-kind idea, its requirement in present-day industry and future prospects…
Though shifting manual business to an e-platform has been tried and tested as a business module, it has still not been able to create a niche for itself in the industry due to the limited usefulness of the sites, because of which the failure stories are more than the success ones. Ramesh is well aware of the pitfalls, but is very upbeat that Texchange, as DMI has branded their 100% B2B e-portal, will be successful with its user-friendly features and industry acceptance. “The type of platform that we have conceived does not exist. Being intermediaries, we buy and sell yarns and fabrics manually, in the process bringing together buyers and sellers over the table. Now, we are trying to put that process on an online platform, so as to expedite the transactions. However, the buyers and the sellers will be permitted to trade on Texchange only after registering with us,” says Ramesh.
Initially, the portal will deal in greige yarns and greige knitted fabrics, but going forward there are plans to introduce more products starting from yarn and raw fabric going on to dyed and processed fabrics in a phased manner. “We are starting with cotton yarn as it is the most easily traded commodity in the market,” reasons Ramesh. While floating the enquiry, yarn quality can be selected amongst various specifications available through the selection criteria. “We want to make trading easier by gathering all relevant information and making it available with just a click, similar to booking tickets online,” says Ramesh.
In the present day scenario there are many mediators between the actual buyer and a seller, making the deal closure process a cumbersome task with information flow a slow process. “On our site, the buyer can float an enquiry listing his specific preferences, which in turn gets transmitted to all the suppliers listed, which is already notified on the website. Within a few minutes all suppliers having the product will respond and the buyer can easily compare the offers. The suppliers can even bid for it in the auction section. Imagine how many layers of inefficiencies will be removed,” avers Ramesh.
One of the major concerns in case of trading online is of quality assurance and realizing this as one of the critical elements for success; DMI is taking utmost care in this area. “We have a history of selling quality yarns and fabrics, which our existing client base can vouch for, as we make sure that we deliver what we have promised, according to the client specification. As this portal is an open platform, every new buyer or seller who registers will be checked for credit-worthiness by a certified agency like DNB before going forward,” informs Ramesh.
Through the portal, suppliers and buyers can come together and respond to each other’s enquiry, but once a contract is finalised, DMI’s existing setup takes over and ensures that the order is executed systematically. “At the initial stage, there is no knowledge about who the buyer is and who the spinner is. Every buyer and seller is allotted an automatically generated code, which is used while trading on the portal. Once the contract is finalised, the name of the supplier and buyer is disclosed,” explains Ramesh.
To ensure that the whole process is swift and hassle-free DMI has got customised software developed especially for the web portal, by one of the most renowned software developers in India. The membership and operation on the site being absolutely free, facilitates the audience to be in contact with a large group of customers with much ease.
Website… much more than trading
When the home page opens, you get introduced to “Texchange” – an initiative by DMI, and an overview of the company. You have 3-4 pictures from DMI running in the slider. While on the home page itself, you have a scrolling feed of apparel and world news of the day, powered by ‘just-style.com’ and exchange rates from ‘The Money Converter’. There is a segment containing testimonials from the people that the company is working with for several years. In a separate segment you can find details of ‘Other Textile Products’ which are not being traded through this website, but available with DMI. Purchases from this segment can be made by sending a request to the company and the orders will be executed manually.
The portal has another segment called – ‘hot offers’, which is from the suppliers who have some stock left. It is like a classified advertisement and the user can click on buy and after filling in the registration go ahead with the deal. In this segment one can login as a buyer or a seller. Suppose one registers as a buyer, then he will be directed to the ‘Deals’ header which contains offers floated by sellers that match the requirements and enquiries made by him. Then there is another segment called – ‘Open enquiries’, which are enquiries floated by the buyer. The matching sellers respond, and the responses come in through this segment.
Suppose, a buyer floats an enquiry and gets six responses as per his requirements, and even after to-and-fro conversation between him and the sellers, if he is not able to decide, then he has the option to put his enquiry in ‘Auction’. Immediately, all the sellers will get the message of the particular time and date of the Auction. Further, a timer will start reverse countdown on the home page of the respective seller which will show how much time is left for the Auction to start. At the specified time of the Auction, all sellers and their prices can be seen openly on the Auction segment and bidding happens in real time. Sellers can see which seller is offering what amount and can change the price accordingly, while buyers can see how many sellers are bidding for the order that too at which rate. After Auction expires, the seller with the lowest price proposed bags the order. DMI also offers a live chat option to help the user if he gets stuck.
