Gobuild: Building a B2B Construction Procurement Platform from Primary Research

Gaurav spent his final engineering years working in his family's construction materials wholesale business in Guwahati. Through that time, he met over 50 retailers and contractors across different revenue segments, from sub-₹20Cr contractors to ₹100Cr-plus players, and from small retailers to wholesaler-scale operators.

He kept the conversations informal and conversational, because he knew that structured surveys would not work with this audience. But he was hunting for specific things: what was the most painful part of material procurement, how prices were discovered, and where the process broke down. Across every segment, the same two problems surfaced: contractors were credit-starved and dependent on a small number of suppliers who charged a markup precisely because they controlled the credit, and price transparency was near-zero because TMT bar prices fluctuated multiple times a day based on international, national, and regional factors.

From Research to Thesis

The fact that the problem held across segments, not just one type of buyer, gave Gaurav confidence that it was structural. He identified which segment had the most acute version of the problem and built his initial focus around them.

His thesis was that breaking the transaction into procurement and financing would solve both problems at once. If an NBFC or bank handled the credit, contractors could buy from any supplier on cash terms, eliminating the markup. And a platform could surface real-time price data, removing the information asymmetry.

He founded Gobuild in 2021, took a bank loan of ₹90 lakhs, onboarded 30+ B2B customers with an average order value of ₹23 lakhs, and scaled to ₹25Cr ARR.

The Commodity Forecasting Call

In late 2021, Gaurav made a deliberate macro call. Tensions were building around Russia and Ukraine, and he analyzed two scenarios: if the war broke out, iron ore and coking coal supply chains would be disrupted and steel prices would spike. If it did not, seasonal demand peaking in the winter construction season would still drive prices up. He identified a no-loss scenario and hoarded 200 metric tons of steel in December 2021, holding through April 2022. Prices moved from ₹60 to ₹80 per unit, generating 33% returns in four months and contributing to 30% gross margins for the business.

What the Research Got Right and Wrong

Early conversations had suggested that digital features like order tracking would matter to customers. Gaurav had already deprioritized those in favor of financing and price discovery, and the live business confirmed that instinct: customers wanted better financing, better prices, and a larger product assortment. The digital convenience features were not what moved them.

The business ultimately hit a structural ceiling: the bank loan came at 11%, but onboarding NBFCs added cost of capital of 17-18% plus a spread, making the unit economics unworkable at scale. Gaurav concluded that the business was more NBFC than procurement platform and wound it down after two years.