When it comes to India’s burgeoning B2B ecommerce market, a big investor group is betting big on B2B marketplaces.

And Bessemer Venture Partners thinks others will as well. In about 11 years, Bessemer projects that B2B ecommerce will have grown from about 1% of India’s $3.75 trillion economy to about 5% of an estimated $6 trillion economy by 2030.

“Today’s massive shift to online transactions is just the beginning,” Bessemer says. “As India’s $3.75 trillion economy grows to $6 trillion within the next decade, we anticipate a significant portion of this growth will be driven by the digital economy.”

Bessemer has investments in digital brands such as Pinterest, Shopify, Twilio, Yelp, and LinkedIn, with $19 billion of assets under management. But the firm sees the biggest opportunity for growth in B2B digital commerce coming from B2B marketplaces.

“While most of the first $100 billion of India’s digital economy has come from consumer digitization, we believe a large portion of the digital economy’s next 10X will come from business digitization and online transactions, or what we broadly call business-to-business (B2B) online marketplaces,” Bessemer says.

By 2030, Bessemer projects that India’s B2B marketplace market could generate up to $200 billion in annual gross merchandise volume. “It’s important to note that even with such substantial growth, online B2B gross merchandise value (GMV) would still account for only 5% of overall B2B business in India, which is significantly lower than the penetration in other countries,” Bessemer says.

B2B marketplaces are poised for rapid growth because they will play a significant role in India’s emerging digital economy, Bessemer says.

“The supply-side in India is highly unstandardized and fragmented, necessitating that marketplaces manage entire transactions through a full-stack approach. This stronger control over supply leads to improved customer experience, strong customer retention, and the ability to build a long-term sustainable business,” Bessemer says. “B2B marketplaces thrive by specializing in a specific vertical rather than attempting to cater to a wide range of industries. After establishing a strong presence and capturing a significant market share within a vertical, marketplaces can subsequently explore adjacent verticals or expand their reach within the existing vertical’s supply chain.”

Sign up

Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 B2B News, published 4x/week, covering technology and business trends in the growing B2B ecommerce industry. Contact Mark Brohan, vice president of B2B and Market Research Development, at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @markbrohan.

Follow us on LinkedIn and be the first to know when new Digital Commerce 360 B2B News content is published.