New Delhi: NowPurchase, a procurement technology company for the metal manufacturing industry, on Tuesday said it has raised $2.4 million in a funding round led by Orios and InfoEdge Ventures.

Angel investor Neeraj Arora (former WhatsApp global business head and cofounder HalloApp) also participated in the round.

The Kolkata-based company said it will use the funds towards expanding its procurement business by establishing a global supplier base and expanding into other parts of India.

It added that funds will be also used to further strengthen the technology team to build out its procurement platform & expand the offering of its manufacturing intelligence software- MetalCloud.

Naman Shah, founder and CEO, NowPurchase, said, “Metal is the primary building block or backbone of the physical world and will remain so in the foreseeable future. As a result, it is critical that we are able to manufacture metal efficiently.”

“The source and quality of raw materials has a significant impact on metal manufacturing efficiency. NowPurchase is a one-stop procurement platform for these raw materials, and we believe that efficient raw material sourcing can have a significant positive impact on the metal manufacturing industry,” he said.

He added, “We will be using the funds to expand our imports of raw materials from across the globe. In comparison to countries in Europe and the Middle East, this space in India is unorganized. We intend to leverage technology to harness the potential currently lost in this disaggregated market.”

NowPurchase was founded in 2017 by Naman Shah and Aakash Shah, with an initial investment of $300,000 from Nipha Group.

It provides its users with a WhatsApp bot to discover prices and stock in real time, a dedicated technically trained team to provide on-ground service and quality assurance, and a proprietary software-MetalCloud to optimize their manufacturing process.

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