The archive · Commerce & Marketplaces · Strategic decision · 2015–2026
OfBusiness's SME commerce-plus-credit bet: FY26 PAT ₹724 crore, IPO-bound
OfBusiness bets India's SMEs need raw materials and credit as one product: FY26 revenue ₹20,645 crore, PAT ₹724 crore, now preparing its IPO.
OfBusiness (OFB Tech)
What the business is
A B2B platform that procures and delivers raw materials - metals, chemicals, polymers, agri commodities, petrochemicals and building materials - for India's manufacturing and infrastructure SMEs, financing those purchases through its NBFC Oxyzo Financial Services.
How it started
Founded in 2016 by Nitin Jain (IIT-Delhi engineer who ran the structured-credit desk at Royal Bank of Scotland until 2015), McKinsey partner Ruchi Kalra, Matrix Partners VC Asish Mohapatra, Vasant Sridhar and Bhuvan Gupta, OfBusiness started from a blank sheet with a deliberate rule: no Amazon/Flipkart-style B2C play. Through ITC executive Sanjiv Rangrass it reached builders in Guntur, and after early detours into third-party logistics, consumer construction and furniture, the founders narrowed to procuring raw materials for SMEs and financing those purchases.
What happened
The model compounded through a ~$878M total raise: SoftBank's ~$160M round in mid-2021 made OfBusiness a unicorn, and in December 2021 Alpha Wave, Tiger Global and SoftBank invested $325M at a $5B valuation. FY24 revenue was ₹19,296.3 crore with ₹603 crore net profit. In December 2024 the company converted to public company OFB Tech Ltd, finalised bankers including Axis, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Citigroup and Bank of America, and planned a $750M-$1B IPO with about $200M of fresh capital; its NBFC arm Oxyzo (over 70% owned) was also preparing to list.
How it ended up
Ahead of that IPO, FY26 results showed deliberate profit-first surgery: consolidated revenue fell 7% to ₹20,645 crore after discontinuing low-return lines, while PAT rose 21% to ₹724 crore. Commerce EBITDA was up 39% to ₹769 crore at a 4% margin, the commerce business turned free-cash-flow-to-firm positive at ₹390 crore, and Oxyzo ended FY26 with ₹11,800 crore of AUM (up 28%), 3.8% return on assets and 0.75% gross NPAs.
Background
OfBusiness was founded in 2016 by five operators from banking, consulting and venture capital - Nitin Jain, Ruchi Kalra, Asish Mohapatra, Vasant Sridhar and Bhuvan Gupta - who decided explicitly not to build another B2C marketplace. Their bet: India's manufacturing SMEs lose to opaque raw-material pricing and scarce working capital, so a platform that procures bulk inputs and finances the purchase in one flow would win where pure marketplaces had not.
The founders started through ITC's network with builders in Guntur, tried and dropped third-party logistics, consumer construction and furniture, then concentrated on SME procurement of metals, chemicals, polymers and building materials with lending attached. The wedge worked because it attacked a real price gap: banks covered only about 30% of SME working-capital needs, and OfBusiness priced its lines at 15-18% against the 24-48% charged by local lenders and traders.
SoftBank's ~$160M round in mid-2021 made OfBusiness a unicorn; in December 2021 Alpha Wave, Tiger Global and SoftBank put in $325M at a $5B valuation, taking total funding to about $878M. FY24 revenue reached ₹19,296.3 crore with ₹603 crore net profit, and in December 2024 the company converted to a public company (OFB Tech Ltd), named bankers for a planned $750M-$1B IPO and started preparing its NBFC arm Oxyzo, in which it holds over 70%, for listing too.
FY26 results in July 2026 showed the profit-first discipline paying off: revenue fell 7% to ₹20,645 crore as low-return lines were discontinued, while PAT rose 21% to ₹724 crore; commerce EBITDA grew 39% to ₹769 crore at a 4% margin; the commerce business turned free-cash-flow positive at ₹390 crore; and Oxyzo ended the year with ₹11,800 crore of AUM, 3.8% RoA and 0.75% gross NPAs. Ten years in, the commerce-plus-credit bet is profitable, cash-generative and still waiting on its public listing.
What has to be true
- It attached credit to a real transaction: Oxyzo lent against order flow and raw-material purchases, giving it repayment visibility that banks without that data could not match.
- It attacked a concrete SME pain - banks meeting only ~30% of working-capital needs - and undercut informal lenders charging 24-48% with 15-18% lines.
- Discipline over fashion: the founders refused to chase valuation, narrowed from scattered experiments to one wedge, and kept profitability a core metric from before the pandemic.
- Ahead of the IPO it was willing to shrink: revenue fell 7% in FY26 by design as low-return lines were cut, while PAT, EBITDA margin and cash flow all improved.
What can be applied
Do not copy B2C playbooks into B2B: bundling procurement with cheaper credit won OfBusiness its SMEs, and going public made it shrink revenue on purpose to show profit and cash flow.
Aftermath
As of July 29, 2026, OfBusiness (OFB Tech) remains private and IPO-bound, reporting FY26 consolidated revenue of ₹20,645 crore, PAT of ₹724 crore, a free-cash-flow-positive commerce business and ₹11,800 crore of AUM in its lending arm Oxyzo, which carries a 3.8% RoA and 0.75% gross NPA. The company had earlier signalled a $750M-$1B offering with a fresh-issue component of about $200M, and continues to scale headcount (30,000+ employees) and its BidAssist tender-intelligence platform (1.5M+ users) ahead of the listing.
Sources
- OfBusiness On The Turning Point That Paved The Way To Become Unicorn
- IPO-Bound OfBusiness Converts Into Public Company
- IPO-bound OfBusiness's FY26 revenue falls 7% to Rs 20,645 crore; PAT rises 21% to Rs 724 crore
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