Tag: B4B

Why the Gold industry needs to wake up to the reality of blockchain technology

Post author By Ram Krishnna Rao
Post date April 30, 2018

I walked into the newsagent to get some water and nibbles as I was driving a long way to visit one of my customers on the outskirts of London. It should have been an uneventful occurrence to grab a bottle of water when my eyes darted to what I thought was an ATM machine. But this was no ordinary ATM.

It said ‘BITCOIN ATM Machine’

I instantly looked at the shop owner and he smiled back and said,’ I know what your thinking’ as if he had read my mind!

I am a passionate advocate for blockchain technology and recently qualified as an IBM Foundation Blockchain Developer to quench my growing thirst for how this technology suddenly became more mainstream and the ways in which it is already disrupting traditional industries. (see my last post where my co-founder Sukhi Jutla, became the works, first author, to have a book published on the blockchain.

http://s752989504.websitehome.co.uk/get-women-fintech-interview-marketorders-coo-co-founder-sukhi-jutla/

I continued to look at the Bitcoin ATM machine as I had heard about their existence but till now thought it was the myth. I didn’t realize people were using cryptocurrency to pay for their water bottles already!

Though blockchain tech is relatively new (it’s under a decade old), I am a newcomer to this industry but it’s changing so fast already. I have recently begun to get really inspired and excited about the way this technology can bring about huge changes especially in making things move more efficiently. In the gold industry, this means more transparency in the supply chain process as well as in confirming the origin of products.

So thought I was surprised to see my first Bitcoin vending machine, it certainly won’t be the last time I will see it. Perhaps next time, I may even pay for my bottle of water with a cryptocurrency!

Written by CEO & Founder, Ram Krishnna Rao

Tags B2B, B4B, Bitcoin, Blockchain, Business, Cryptocurrecy, FinTech, Gold, Jewellery, MarketOrders, MO, NewTech, Online, Platform, technology

MarketOrders News

How to get more women into FinTech – an interview with MarketOrders COO and co – founder Sukhi Jutla

Post author By Ram Krishnna Rao
Post date April 23, 2018

In today’s post @WomenInTech interviewed our co-founder and COO, Sukhi Jutla.

Sukhi is passionate about helping more women get into tech and MarketOrders also aims to
promote and champion more women in tech.

Read on for the full interview in which Sukhi shares her views on:

the changes in the FinTech space over the last few years
how we can inspire more women into FinTech careers
the importance of equality
inspiring words for female founders

Has the gender landscape changed in the FinTech environment from what you have seen over the last few years? If so, in what way?
When I started out in banking over a decade ago I was usually the only women in the meeting room. Or one of only a handful when attending related conferences. But today, with the explosion of FinTech becoming more mainstream and more and more people entering entrepreneurship, I see more women entering the FinTech space.
This is also because FinTech has expanded out of the constraints of banking and is now spilling into other areas of our day to day lives, such as blockchain being used in the creative industries by authors and musicians. FinTech is no longer constrained to the big banking giants. It has now become more accessible and is being used in different ways. And this is great becomes it encourages more women to consider working in this area.

What can we do to inspire more women into Fintech?
FinTech from the outside does seem like a male-dominated industry as people tend to think its all about computing and coding. But the essence of this industry is all about how to be more creative using people and technology. And it is these skills precisely; people skills and creativity, that i think women have plenty of expertise and strengths in.
To inspire more women into FinTech, we need to highlight the key skills and aptitudes it takes to succeed in this field and let women know that they don’t have to be coders or programmers to do well in FinTech.
We need to show that FinTech is all-encompassing and welcomes all skills and backgrounds. And more importantly, that it is an industry open to anyone as long as you are creative and curious and have a desire to use technology for good.
Showcasing and highlighting women’s efforts and success in the world of FinTech is also a good way to show other women that FinTech is a viable career path for them. It’s important that we champion and support each other!

What does equality mean to you?
Equality means being given opportunities and awarded credit based on what you bring to the table regardless of your gender or background.
What would you like to see change in regards to equality in FinTech?
There should be more focus on showcasing all the industries that FinTech is shaking up. It’s no longer just the domain of finance. For example, blockchain is shaking things up in traditional industries such as fishing, shipping and even gold jewellery.
The more we can share about how FinTech is changing our lives, the more we can raise awareness that FinTech is not just for the banking elite, but open for anyone who is curious and creative enough to want to see how technology can be used to disrupt their industry.
For example, my company, MarketOrders is looking into how blockchain can be used in the traditional gold jewellery industry. From payments to verifying the source of the gold, there is a lot of scope for change and creating better processes and systems.

What inspirational words would you offer to other women?
Identify the types of skills and work you enjoy doing and that brings out the best in you. Then find work that will use those unique abilities you have. I call this your ‘Unfair Advantage’ and talk about it in my book ‘Escape The Cubicle: Quit The Job You Hate, Create A Life You Love’.
For example, if you are great at organising and getting things done, then you can look into working for a FinTech startup that needs those types of skills.
FinTech is not only for coders and programmers. Every successful company needs a balance of skills and abilities and you need to see what you are good at and how you can best contribute. And the added bonus is when you do work you, love, you never have to work a day in your life!
FinTech is going to continue to be a growing part of our lives and there has never been a more exciting time to jump in and shape this exciting future. So I welcome you to join this growing industry and put your stamp on it!

Written by CEO & Founder, Ram Krishnna Rao

Tags Author, B4B, Blockchain, Entrepreneur, EscapeTheCubicle, Female, FinTech, GoldJewellery, IndieAuthor, MarketOrders, Marketplace, NewTech, Online, Platform, SukhiJutla

MarketOrders News

Q& A with the founders of Marketorders

Post author By Ram Krishnna Rao
Post date April 9, 2018

Today’s blog is a quick fire Q&A with the Founders, Ram and Sukhi. They talk about what MarketOrders does, how they came up with the idea of digitising the gold trade industry and the defining moment that changed it all.

Tell us what your business does in fewer than 25 words:

MarketOrders in an online marketplace helping to connect independent jewellery brands directly to manufacturer’s around the world to source the best products at the best price.

How did you come up with the idea?

The founders have been in the gold jewellery market for over 15 years and saw how inefficient and archaic the processes and systems are in the gold industry where it is still run in a very traditional manner and only 4% of transactions occur on-line.

We found in our previous business that we were still taking orders manually and found there was no online or curated destination for jewellery retailers to be able to source the products they needed. So we decided to help the retailers by accepting multiple small orders from many retailers and aggregating their orders. This aggregated order was then sent to the manufacturer who could accept larger orders and give us bulk discount savings. These savings are then passed back to the jewellery retailers.

Without MarketOrders, small retailers cannot access the products and prices the large manufacturer reserves for larger orders and clients. And the manufacturers also benefit by getting more orders from more customers. MarketOrders allows a more efficient way to manage the supply/demand issues that many small retailers and SMEs face.

photo credit: https://pixabay.com/en/dropshipping-oberlo-shopify-3264486/

What makes your business different from the competition?

MarketOrders is the only online curated destination for the gold jewellery industry where every step of the process is online. Our customers, the retailers, can order products online, pay online and the products are delivered to their door.

All our competitors are still working in a hybrid version where only some of the processes are on-line and the rest is very manual and hence time-consuming which can lead to a lot of delays.

By bringing the entire supply chain online MarketOrders is able to bring greater visibility to the supply and demand of gold jewellery products. We can also collate data and use those insights to help our customers. For example, retailers can track which products sell the most at certain times throughout the year and we can even use this data to do predictive orders.

Who are your clients/customers? How many do you have?

MarketOrders is a 2-sided marketplace so we work with both the jewellery retailers (SMEs) and the manufacturers.

Currently we serve retailers based in the UK and work with manufacturers abroad (Hong Kong, Singapore & Dubai).

Our focus is on serving the gold, diamond and precious metals jewellers in the B2B space.

photo credit: https://pixabay.com/en/jewelry-necklace-diamond-ring-3213722/

Key moments

What’s been the most challenging thing about starting your business so far?

The gold industry is extremely traditional and operates largely off-line. The only way to break into this market is by trust. It took us years to build solid relationships with manufactures and retailers. This took a lot of time and effort to develop but was worth it. Because this is the only way to really understand the problems your customers are facing.

Gold is an emotional product; people use it to look beautiful or use it as an investment for their security, so there is a huge amount of trust involved in every transaction. You need to prove that you are providing gold of a premium quality, be very clear and open as to where it is sourced from and to be able to deliver the products on time. So building that deep trust with each one of our customers had to be done in person and was challenging as it took many years to do.

What was your breakthrough moment?

When we realised we could aggregate multiple small orders from multiple retailers and aggregate them to a larger singular order so the manufacturer could accept the orders and give us bulk discount savings. This solved 2 problems; allowing smaller retailers to access these large manufacturers and get more designs and products at a lower price and also allow manufacturers to increase their capacity utilisation as their machinery was often left idle as they needed minimum orders to produce the products. For the first time, the gold industry was now on-line and had an on-line presence.

What is your goal for your business?

To create the largest and most trusted marketplace for the supply and provision of gold and associated products and take it to an IPO.

Written by CEO & Founder, Ram Krishnna Rao

Tags AggregatedOrder, B4B, Business, Connecting, GoldJewellery, Manufacturers, MarketOrders, Marketplace, MO, Online, Retailers, SMEs

MarketOrders News

Why is the B4B model so important in today’s digital consumer world?

Post author By Ram Krishnna Rao
Post date April 2, 2018

Mobile technology and the Internet have empowered consumers in a way that they are now more informed about market offers than the retailers trying to sell to them. Changing their minds or switching providers is now as easy as clicking a mouse.

The combination of commoditization and the empowered customer makes it even more important to have a Consumer Centric Culture where the experience of purchasing is just as important as the product that has been purchased. (Check out the last post to learn more about the Consumer Centric Culture).

Therefore, business owners must be able to buy the products they need in order to customise their customer’s requirement and be able to compete effectively in todays ‘experience economy’.

photo credit: https://pixabay.com/en/computer-laptop-business-office-3246121/

From B2C to C2B

Today’s era is no longer B2C but C2B. The consumer drives the transaction. Therefore, the B2B concept of “Make, Ship, Sell” is no longer applicable and is instead replaced by the B4B concept which allows retailers to buy “On Demand”.

The B4B model encourages manufacturers to stop thinking about how they can sell more products and start thinking about understanding and actively working with retailers to arrive at a specific end result. Manufactures should be working for retailers, not the other way around.

Applying the B4B concept, MarketOrders built the platform to bring “visibility of supply and Demand” for both retailers and manufacturers by “Digitization” of the entire gold jewellery industry by centralisation. A central network platform will successfully help to map out customer needs and desires which will help retailers to practice and implement a customer centric culture in return.

MarketOrders will help retailers to discover what their customers want, create greater density with designs and selection, a transparent system and increase the ability to tap into global sellers directly and faster, which will allow speed to market.

Now, using the B4B concept, business owners will be surrounded with a customer-inspired culture. In today’s digital customer era, creating a customer centric culture is and should be a top priority for all businesses, especially independent small retailers, in order to thrive in today’s customer first world.

The future is centralisation

Centralisation allows data and insights to be collected from every transaction. These insights can help grow the business of the participant on the platform with greater engagement to their customer closer. The building of technology embedded on the MarketOrders platform is focused on customer experience and the customer focus is at the heart of the snowball effect.

When you add the B4B concept with a centralised network, we will help small businesses to be in better control of their success at scale.

photo credit: https://pixabay.com/en/jewelry-manufacturing-manufacturing-1381501/

Why does the gold jewellery industry need centralization?

By centralizing the supply chain in the gold jewelry industry, it gives both retailers and suppliers a greater level of visibility in terms of where to source the best products they need.

The B4B model allows the technology to be built around the customer and helps small business owners understand their customer needs. For once, there will be the ability to see buying trends within the gold markets and this data can be used to generate deep insights for retailers to help drive their business success through better decisions making. These data based insights will drive greater adoption for more business growth and ultimately lead in helping achieve targeted business outcomes.

What do you think of the rise of the B4B economy? Post your comments below.

Written by CEO & Founder, Ram Krishnna Rao

Tags B2B, B2C, B4B, Business, Digital, GoldJewellery, Jewellery, Manufacturers, New-Tech, Online, Retail, SMEs

MarketOrders News

The 3 C’s every retailer needs to implement in their business

Post author By Ram Krishnna Rao
Post date March 26, 2018

photo credit: https://pixabay.com/en/agreement-beard-beverage-2548140/

MarketOrders is focused on helping off-line retailers to source the best gold products they need directly from the suppliers. And in order to do that we help retailers adopt the 3 C’s; A Consumer Centric Culture.

Our platform allows our customers to buy the products they need by creating a B4B model. This is known as Business-For-Business. This model works best when both players in the marketplace benefit from each transaction.

And this is exactly what happens with MarketOrders. Our retailer’s benefit from being able to access thousands of products online (when usually they only have access to 20-30 designs and products that the walk in sales man has on him at the time).

And the supplier’s benefit by now being able to service and supply smaller retailers who previously they could not serve due to the minimum order quantities they needed.

MarketOrders bypasses this problem by encouraging smaller orders from retailers and our unique software aggregates these orders into larger orders and routes them to the right supplier who can then accept the large order and provide us with a bulk discount cost. In the B4B model, it’s a win-win situation for all market players.

How do you achieve a Consumer Centric Culture?

A B4B model helps buyers to align with the consumer centric culture.

In order to achieve a consumer centric culture, the B4B model works backward towards a consumer centric culture. This amplifies the needs and wants of the customer coming into the store.

The availability of faster internet penetration and mobile devices allows the B4B concept to become more important because consumers now also have access to more products and have greater visibility of price, Consumers are walking into your shops knowing what they want. The question to retailers is, are you ready to serve your customers with what they are asking for?

We are working hard on creating the MarketOrders platform which can bring greater connections between retailers and manufacturers or suppliers in real time for the first time in a saleable and affordable manner.

A Consumer Centric Culture [3C’s] is one in which retail owners and employees are collectively working to fulfil customer’s needs as their ultimate goal. Everyone is aware of the direct and indirect impact his or her work has on the overall customers experience at every point of interaction within the customer journey.

If you are a retailer, how are you ensuring you create a consumer centric culture in your business? Please post in the comments below with your thoughts.

Why B4B model are so important in today’s digital consumer world?

photo credit: https://pixabay.com/en/hand-business-human-africa-african-3230679/

Because mobile technology and the Internet have empowered consumers in a way that they are now more informed about market offers than the retailers trying to sell to them. Changing their minds or switching providers is now as easy as clicking a mouse. The combination of commoditization and the empowered customer is taking the fight to acquire and retain customers down to Consumer Centric Culture in today’s experience economy. Therefore business owners must be able to buy what the need in order to customise their customer’s requirement.

Today’s era is no longer B2C but C2B. Therefore B2B concept of “Make, Ship, Sell” no longer applicable and replace by B4B concept where allows retailers to buy “On Demand”.

B4B model encourages manufacturers to stop thinking about how they can sell more products and start thinking about understanding and actively working with retailers to arrive at a specific end result.

Applying B4B concept, market orders built the platform to bring “visibility of supply and Demand” for both retailers and manufacturers by “Digitization” the entire gold jewellery industry by Centralisation. Central network platform will successfully mapping out customer needs and desire, which will help retailer to practice customer centric culture in return.

Marketorders will help retailers to discover what their customer want, create great density with design and selection, transparent system and increase ability to tap to global sellers directly and faster, which will allow speed to market.

Now, using B4B concept, business owners will surround with customer-inspired culture. In today’s digital customer era, creating customer centric culture is top priority for all businesses especially independent small retailers to thrive in today’s customer first world.

Centralization allows data collection of every trade on the platform, that able to provide the insight and help grow the business of the participant on the platform with greater engagement to their customer closer. The building of technology embedded on MarketOrders platform are around customer experience and customer focus at the heart of the snowball effect.

The B4B concept with centralization network will help and built the ability of small business to be in control and success at scale.

By centralization of entire gold jewelry industry, it gives lens of visibility to participant of the platform to drive desired outcomes and creates opportunity to research and experiment using the collected data from marketorders platform. This process will give valued insight and able to re-create for each and every users to succeed at scale.

B4B concept model and technology built around customer experience and customer focus on Marketorders platform, help small business understand the customer needs and use the data available to drive the decision for their business success. The data can help participant traders to quantify the equation of the business and help them to operate efficiently and better.

Every facet of marketorders platform, architected to adopt at capturing and analyzing interaction and transaction of every trade data then turn those insight into actions that add-value to the participant of the platform collectively which will drive adoption for more business growth and ultimately lead in helping achieve targeted business outcome.

Written by CEO & Founder, Ram Krishnna Rao

Tags B4B, Business-For-Business, GoldJewellery, MarketOrders, Marketplace, Online, Platform, Retailers, SMEs, UK, Worldwide

MarketOrders News

What is a B4B model and how can it impact the gold jewellery retailers & SMEs?

Post author By Ram Krishnna Rao
Post date March 19, 2018

MarketOrders is modelling a B4B concept to enhance consumer centric culture among independent gold jewellery retailers.

photo credit: https://pixabay.com/en/jewelry-store-wedding-rings-wedding-1803808/

B4B is ‘Business-For-Business’ and it differs from the traditional B2B model (Business-To-Business) by putting the SMEs at the heart of every transaction.

SMEs are empowered to source and order the products they want as opposed to the B2B model whereby manufacturers produce what they want and then push the products down the distribution channel with no regards as to what the SMEs need and want.

And the SME is the one who knows what they need as they face off to the end consumer on a daily basis.

By using MarketOrders, SMEs can tailor their orders to what they need and the data we collect helps them to analyse what products are selling the best. They can use this data to make better and informed decisions.

photo credit: https://pixabay.com/en/man-people-achievement-african-3230661/

There is a severe lack of such data in the jewellery trade industry but these insights are imperative and needed.

MarketOrders will be building out a detailed Data Dashboard for our SMEs so they can track and view what items sell the best.

They can use insights form this data to make better decisions and choices and ultimately be better placed to serve their end consumers. Such data can give them a competitive edge from all the other retailers, especially online, that they are now facing.

Are you a SME operating in the jewellery business? Please share your thoughts and tell us how MarketOrders can serve you better by leaving a comment below this post.

Written by CEO & Founder, Ram Krishnna Rao

Tags B2B, B4B, Business-4-Business, Connecting, Empowering, Gold Jewellery, Market Orders, Marketplace, MO, New-Tech, Online, Retail, SMEs

MarketOrders News

How Marketorders is Enabling The Future Of Independent Retailers through Centralisation on a Global Scale

Post author By Ram Krishnna Rao
Post date March 12, 2018

MarketOrders is a marketplace-connecting retailers to manufacturers. We call this a Business-For-Business concept (B4B).

What makes this approach different from traditional Business-To-Business (B2B) is that retailers are at the heart of key decisions on the MarketOrders platform.

Volume buyers are no longer the only ones with purchasing power. We champion the smaller retailers by helping them to get access to the manufacturers and products they need at the best possible price.

Our platform has been created on a secure base layer featuring On-Demand, Order-Aggregation processes.

Multiple orders from various different retailers are pulled together via our Smart Router mechanism. This becomes the primary source of business value as physical processes are turned into real-time data flow amongst a network of retailers and manufacturers. This allows the business owners to achieve economies of scale.

Why should retailers use the MarketOrders Platform?

Here are a few reasons as to why we believe retailers would benefit from using our platform that has been designed with the retailers specifically in mind.

No central point of failure.
Support global scaling.
Lowering cost and enhancing quality.
Increase communications and sharing best practice.
Brings transparency on price, purity and supply chain.
Business practice becomes faster, relevant and cost effective.

photo credit: https://pixabay.com/en/earth-globe-future-forward-golden-422758/

How does the MarketOrders platform work?

MarketOrders aims to be a single, unified and centralised platform creating the ultimate marketplace for the gold jewellery trade industry.

The aim of the marketplace is to consolidate the entire supply chain vertically from back-end production to front-end consumption across a network of retailers and manufacturers around the globe.

This allows the ‘middleman’ to be cut away from the process bringing greater efficiencies to the supply chain.

MarketOrders not only empowers the independent retailers (SME’s) but also makes it possible for them to be in.

MarketOrders is ushering in a digital revolution for traditional brick and mortar jewellery shops. This will allow them to face other digital challenges such as online jewellery shops and be better able to compete with the rise of the experience economy.

This article was written by Ram Krishnna Rao, CEO MarkerOrders

Tags Aggregated-Order, B2B, B4B, Connecting, Enabling, Gold, Jewellery, Manufacturers, MarketOrders, On-Demand, Retailers, SMEs

MarketOrders News

How Retailers benefit from using MarketOrders platform?

Post author By Ram Krishnna Rao
Post date February 26, 2018

MarketOrders is a revolutionary B4B (Business-for-Business) platform providing independent jewellery retailers with a cheaper and better way to buy gold jewellery products & services through a disruptive eCommerce marketplace where orders are aggregated and sent to the manufacturer to secure bulk discount savings.

MarketOrders is branded as a retailer champion, delivering a better and fairer
way to buy products and services.
> Provides control – I order what I need, I feel that I am the boss.
> Saves money – cheaper than buying from wholesaler.
> Saves time – fast, intuitive and mobile first.
> Convenient – use it anyplace, anytime.
> Trusted – vetted marketplace.
> Transparent – clear how MarketOrders makes money.