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Not very long ago, shopping meant making lists, stepping out, going to a store, and buying. But in the age of digitisation, customers can shop from various channels such as online marketplaces, brand web stores, and social media channels along with offline stores.

Former HCL Technologies colleagues Venkataramana Rao Nott, Deepak Singla, Annajee Rao Nott, and Piyush Madan realised the opportunity in omnichannel retailing.

The colleagues, who worked to develop the retail and supply chain vertical at HCL, in 2007 launched Noida-based Vinculum, a global software company that enables omnichannel retailing.

The startup provides a full-stack omnichannel SaaS software that helps brands and retailers sell across sales channels, fulfil from any location, and easily scale their business. 

Venkataramana, Founder and CEO, says, “Any brand today sells from several channels. Our software platform enables brands to list products across all the channels. After listing and selling the product, the platform also helps them manage orders, inventory, and shipping from a central location. So, all orders — from any channel — can be managed from a single platform.”

Enabling omnichannel retailing

According to the CEO, the company’s core product, Vin eRetail VMS, allows brands to list their products on web stores, and online marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, Flipkart, Lazada Myntra, Nykaa among others. It also helps the brands list, manage, and sell products via social media channels, offline stores, franchisees, and distributors.

Venkatramana explains that the software gives brands access to the Vin PIM tool to onboard and track product information. The Vin Lister tool helps brands automatically enlist product details on multiple marketplaces. 

Vin OMS helps brands manage orders, inventory, returns, and fulfilment across multiple marketplaces. Apart from this, the company also enables tool-based payment reconciliations to manage customer returns and track payments via its Vin Reco tool.

“We help enable omnichannel retailing by enabling the fulfilment of online orders through inventory in own warehouse, third party warehouse, own stores, and franchises among others,” he says. 

Venkataramana adds that all the tools are available as a part of the software. Brands can also subscribe to particular tools as per requirements.

“Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an increase in orders from online channels, leading to accumulation of inventory with offline distributors. One use case is to enable the fulfilment of online orders through the inventory with distributors, and directly delivering to consumers by connecting with last-mile providers. Traditional brands can thus go direct to consumer,” he explains. 

The flagship product was also a part of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Warehouse Management Systems from 2017 to 2020. 

Business and more

The co-founder did not reveal details about the pricing, but says the company operates on a price-per-order-based model. It works with around 800 customers across India and SEA and MEA regions.

“We count brands such as P&G, Swiggy, Shadowfax, Bewakoof, Bata, Titan, BodyShop among others as our customers,” Venkataramana says.

He also claims that Vinculum is working with Enterprise Singapore, a statutory board under the Ministry of Trade and Industry in Singapore, to help local Singapore brands sell across global sales channels.

The Series B-stage company has raised a total of $18 million to date. It is backed by VCs such as Accel Partners, Ivycap Ventures, RB Investments, and angel including Song Hoi See (Founder of Plaza Premium Lounges), Ajay Gupta, Brad Brown ( Ex Mckinsey Global Partners), and Neil Araujo (Founder of iManage).

According to a NASSCOM report, India’s  SaaS revenue reached $3.5 billion in FY20. The report also revealed that the pure-play India SaaS industry has the potential to grow to $13-15 billion by 2025. Several SaaS giants such as Zoho and Freshworks are racing to become the leader in the segment.

Vinculum competes with other notable players such as Mirakl and  Sterling Commerce. 

Speaking about future plans, the founder revealed that the company is presently “focusing on growing at 2X year on year”.