Around 2012, when the Indonesian e-commerce boom was in full swing, Joseph Aditya saw how easily everyone could buy whatever they wanted online. Corporations like his clients, on the other hand, had to call up vendors one at a time and browse through piles of catalogues to find what they needed. What if companies could buy things as easily as everyone else through e-commerce, Aditya, then a director at an industrial instruments company, thought.
Two years later, Aditya founded Ralali, an online marketplace for businesses to make bulk purchases, from office supplies and consumer goods, to machinery and spare parts. Ralali is now used by more than 600,000 businesses, mostly retailers and SMEs. The company has raised multiple rounds of funding, with the latest being a $13m Series C in July 2019.
Ralali is not the only player in Indonesia that is helping businesses to procure online. Companies like MBiz and Bizzy have built their own end-to-end services to help businesses complete the entire procurement process digitally.
