Early-stage deals spur new B2B marketplace models

It took Manish Reddy five years after first working with a startup, Commut, to get bitten by the entrepreneurship bug. 

The engineer, who also pursued liberal arts from Ashoka University, attributes his hankering for entrepreneurship to his childhood. Reddy’s dad is an electrical contractor, while his mom runs an electrical shop. His aunt, another influence, is an interior designer. 

After graduation, Reddy spent about three and a half years as a management consultant before teaming up with Sarthak Agarwal to start up Material Depot — combining his experience at Boston Consulting Group with Agarwal’s understanding of his family’s industries. 

Today, with funding from Accel’s pre-seed startup accelerator programme Atoms, Material Depot has turned into a search engine for architects and designers looking for home interior products. It lists everything from Kajaria tiles and GreenLam laminates to Decowood veneers and Kohler water closets. 

Simply put, Material Depot has digitised the sale of home interior products — it’s an Amazon for architects. Thanks to Material Depot, these professionals discover building materials and trends instantly instead of following the age-old and time-consuming task of flipping through lengthy catalogues and calling vendors.