Pursuite.com is an online solution space for hospitality procurements committed to revolutionise the industry practices of purchase and sale management.

AMIT SHUKLA, CEO, Pursuite, spoke to BW Hotelier about his ideas towards the procurement and service chain of the hospitality industry and what he is planning to add to this sector.

Procurement and service chain are two of the most challenging aspects of hospitality management in the country. What in your view does your business model do to assuage this situation?

 In India the hospitality industry’s procurement protocols have remained unchanged for decades. Trust issues relegate transactions to face-to-face deals and cash on delivery payment terms. Delays in the purchasing cycle mount as purchasers search desperately for better deals, higher discounts and quick turnaround times on desired quotes. All of this complicates timelines of high priority and time intensive projects causing massive losses. Moreover, lack of timely status information on supply shipments is also a major drawback. Improved real-time transportation information can notably enhance supplier’s customer satisfaction.

Product discovery is now possible in a matter of minutes with our exhaustive catalogue powered by all the major brands in the hospitality sector. Buyer to Seller connect is established on a secure encrypted channel allowing for secure negotiations and smarter contracts. Quotes are handled lightning fast with our automated RFQ (Request for Quote) process. Our well-knit logistics makes sure that we have complete visibility into transport status with ability to anticipate external effects on lead time; this enables us to adjust plans in case sudden ‘what if’ scenarios arise. Also, our real time dashboards provide buyers and suppliers end to end tracking facilities on the shipment and delivery of placed orders.

Could you tell us about your business model?

For a marketplace to truly thrive it must meet certain conditions. A comprehensive supplier catalogue constantly updated on merit and service parameters, easy accessibility to said catalogue for the buyers and safe and secure financial transactions between buyers and suppliers. At Pursuite our business model is designed to perfectly recreate these conditions in a digital space. We have automated the entire procurement process in the hospitality sector. Making Pursuite, the first marketplace of its kind in all of Asia. Using a combination of machine learning and intelligent design our platform provides a highly personalized shopping experience to the buyers, giving them access to hundreds of top brands from across the world. At the same time we provide our suppliers with in depth business insights on all activities and engagements on their product range by giving them access to the key metrics they need to positively affect their market reach, conversion rates, and brand building. Pursuite also provides both involved parties with a secure and transparent communication channel. This makes the process of price negotiation and quotation finalization smoother, safer and absolutely secure.

How successful have you been in reaching out to clients?

Immensely successful! We have not had any significant issues in reaching out to our clients. The primary reason behind this is the intelligent design of the platform and quick turnaround guaranteed by our support team. Buyers find it convenient due to our extensive catalogue and customized purchase experience. Suppliers are quick to recognize the advantages we provide in terms of faster deal closures, enhanced sales and easy business management and are hence eager to test out the simple, yet powerful tools provided in our Supplier Dashboard. Some of our prominent buying partners include The Bristol Gurgaon, Treebo, Tree of Life Varanasi, Country Inns & Suites Mysore, Lemon Tree Greater Noida, Novotel Goa, O freak Pune and HUF Sarovar Mumbai. In addition, we have also received highly positive responses from all major suppliers and

manufactures in the sector such as Eagle Forgings, Kiros Hospitality, FCML, Varpaco India, Softsensation, FNS International, Charnock, and Stallion Barware to name a few. We already have over 100+ suppliers with over 150+ brands registered on the portal. Some of the prominent brands enlisted on Pursuite are Trident Bed & Bath linen, Welspun Nath linen, Prapal Exports Bed & Bath linen, Rona glassware, Stolzle glassware, JVD, 3M, Euronics, Samsung, Panasonic, Electrolux, Slumberland, Frontier and Northmace & Hendon.

Can you give an example of how you have made positive change to a hotel or company you have associated with?

Pursuite is associated with some of Asia’s prominent brands and hotel properties and we have been able to extend to them the benefits of our fully automated Purchase Suite. Recently a prominent 4 Star hotel brand made a purchase of over 400+ products through our platform. They managed savings of 13-15% on their purchase order and did so without engaging in weeks of searching for the ideal vendor and the lengthy negotiations that would have followed. They also appreciated the quality and timeliness of delivery and zero freight damages.

In yet another example, a boutique resort had a priority procurement query for a highly specific set of brands. Due to the urgent nature of the query the order needed to be delivered within 4 days. Standard industry practices would have made processing this order in such a short notice practically impossible. However, as our entire system is automated we processed the quotation, enabled buyer to engage with the supplier quickly and seamlessly and successfully delivered the goods within 4 days.

What, in the future, do you think will be the biggest challenges in procurement and hospitality that you will need to address?

Asia is one of the world’s oldest marketplaces. In remote locations you will find trade practices that have remained unchanged for hundreds of years. However, as we progress through the 21st century we face the uphill task of modernizing the business/trade ideology prevalent here. Though computer literacy and comfort have been growing at a healthy rate, proficiency with computing devices still remains a challenge. The bigger challenge that we face is moving the financial aspect of the marketplace completely online. So far the industry has been working on a system of advance payments. New buyers find it difficult to trust smaller suppliers, while at the same time suppliers demand significant portion of order amount as advance payment, unwilling or unable to take the financial risk associated with such trades. At Pursuite are working on establishing escrow like facilities to address these concerns and provide both buyers and sellers with multiple secure payment options in our bid to enable high volume efficient trade across the hospitality sector.