BharatTender Raises ₹1.25 Crore Pre-Seed to Digitize B2B Procurement

BharatTender, a B2B procurement technology platform based in Gurugram, has raised ₹1.25 crore in a pre-seed funding round from an angel investor. The company, founded in 2025 by Rankit Singh, Sanyam Jain, and Anshul Kochar, will deploy the capital to accelerate product development, expand customer acquisition, and roll out new AI-powered procurement capabilities.

The check is small. The market BharatTender is targeting is not. The company pegs India’s private B2B procurement opportunity at ₹110 lakh crore, a figure that dwarfs the government procurement market that the GeM platform has spent a decade digitizing.

A ₹1.25 Crore Bet on a ₹110 Lakh Crore Market

BharatTender’s pre-seed round closed earlier this month, per the company. The capital came from a single angel investor whose name was not disclosed in the announcement. The platform has been live since its 2025 founding and already counts startups, manufacturers, and enterprises among its users, according to the funding announcement for BharatTender.

India’s private sector includes roughly 6.3 crore businesses, the company says, most of which still source products and services through phone calls, WhatsApp conversations, spreadsheets, and personal vendor networks. That fragmentation produces limited price discovery, weak audit trails, and payment risk on every transaction. BharatTender frames the result as a ₹110 lakh crore market that has never had structured infrastructure.

Government procurement in India has been transformed by GeM, the public-sector marketplace that has moved a large share of federal and state buying online. Private procurement has not had a GeM moment. BharatTender is positioning itself as that infrastructure, applying the same marketplace model to the far larger private market that the government platform was never designed to serve.

• ₹1.25 crore: Pre-seed raise
• ₹110 lakh crore: Private procurement market the company targets
• 6.3 crore: Private businesses in India
• 50+: Businesses already on BharatTender
• 200+: Verified suppliers on the platform

What BharatTender’s Marketplace Actually Does

BharatTender runs the full procurement lifecycle on a single platform, from posting a tender to releasing payment. Buyers publish a structured request for quotation with specifications, quantity, delivery timelines, and budget. The system matches the tender to verified vendors by category, location, and performance rating, then runs a sealed competitive bidding process. The selected vendor signs a digital contract, and the buyer’s funds sit in escrow until delivery is confirmed, per the company’s own platform overview.

Vendor verification is the first gate. Every supplier on the platform is checked against GST, PAN, and Udyam registries before they can submit a bid. Bidding itself is sealed, with vendors submitting quotes simultaneously and an AI layer benchmarking each bid against market rates. Contracts are signed digitally using Class 3 digital signature certificates. Payment flows through RBI-compliant escrow accounts, with funds released automatically on delivery milestones. The platform replaces the WhatsApp-and-spreadsheet workflow that most private businesses still rely on.

• Verified Supplier Network: Every vendor checked against GST, PAN, and Udyam before bidding
• Sealed Bid Engine: Vendors submit bids simultaneously, with AI benchmarking against market rates
• AI Tender Matching: Agentic AI matches tenders to relevant vendors by category, location, and rating
• Digital Contracts and E-Sign: Agreements signed via Class 3 DSC, PKI encrypted, legally binding
• Escrow-Secured Payments: Buyer funds held in RBI-compliant escrow, released on delivery confirmation
• Org Dashboard and Approvals: Multi-level approval workflows with full spend analytics

The Founders and the Numbers They Already Have

BharatTender was co-founded in 2025 by Rankit Singh, Sanyam Jain, and Anshul Kochar. The three bring backgrounds across startups, procurement, finance, and supply chains, per the company.

The platform has signed up more than 50 businesses and 200 verified suppliers since launch. Customers include startups, manufacturers, and enterprises, with industry coverage spanning steel and metals, textiles and garments, construction materials, IT and electronics, packaging and FMCG, chemicals and pharma, logistics, and food and agriculture.

Early users are reporting measurable results. Companies on the platform have seen procurement cycle times reduced by three times, the company says, and sourcing savings of 10-15%. One customer, a steel and alloys business in Ludhiana, posted a tender for HR coils, received nine sealed bids within 48 hours, and saved ₹1.8 lakh versus their usual vendor. A Surat textiles procurement head cited the escrow system as the reason she stopped losing money to vendors who took advance payments and disappeared.

The customer base spans India’s industrial hubs, from Ludhiana’s steel corridor to Surat’s textile market to Hyderabad’s contractor ecosystem. Each city tells the same procurement story: calls to vendors on WhatsApp, five quotes with no way to compare them, advance payments by cheque, late or partial deliveries, and no recourse when vendors ghost. BharatTender’s platform applies verified vendors to eliminate the fake-supplier risk, sealed bidding to eliminate the price-fixing risk, and escrow to eliminate the payment risk.

Where the Capital Goes

The ₹1.25 crore will be deployed across three priorities, per the company. First, product development, with the engineering team building out the AI-powered tender evaluation capabilities and expanding the supplier network. Second, customer acquisition, including onboarding anchor customers in manufacturing, textiles, and construction. Third, the rollout of AI tools designed to enhance sourcing, vendor selection, and procurement efficiency.

The company is also in discussions with several large enterprises for pilot deployments and strategic partnerships, per the announcement. The platform is already operational, so the capital is going into scaling what works rather than building from scratch. The AI capabilities include agentic tender matching, AI benchmarking of sealed bids against market rates, and planned evaluation tools that the company frames as the layer that turns a procurement marketplace into a procurement intelligence platform.

• Product development for AI-powered tender evaluation
• Customer acquisition across manufacturing, textiles, and construction
• Expansion of the verified supplier network
• AI tools for sourcing, vendor selection, and procurement efficiency
• Pilot deployments and strategic partnerships with large enterprises

The GeM Parallel and Why It Matters

BharatTender’s positioning leans heavily on the GeM comparison. The Government e-Marketplace has moved a large share of federal and state procurement onto a single digital platform since its launch, standardizing pricing, vendor verification, and payment for the public sector. The private sector has had no equivalent, even though it is several times larger. BharatTender’s bet is that the same marketplace structure, verified vendors, sealed bidding, digital contracts, escrow payments, can serve private businesses at a scale that government procurement never reached.

The company is explicit about the ambition. “Indian businesses lose money every day to opaque procurement not because they want to, but because there has never been infrastructure for anything better,” said Rankit Singh, Co-founder and CEO of BharatTender, in the full round coverage and CEO statement. The round was valued at $150,000, per the $150,000 funding listing.

Indian businesses lose money every day to opaque procurement not because they want to, but because there has never been infrastructure for anything better. We’re building that infrastructure.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much did BharatTender raise and from whom?

The company raised ₹1.25 crore in a pre-seed round from a single angel investor whose name was not disclosed in the announcement. The round closed earlier this month and was valued at $150,000.

What does BharatTender’s platform do?

BharatTender runs an end-to-end B2B procurement marketplace. Buyers post structured tenders, the platform matches them to verified vendors, sealed bids are submitted and benchmarked by AI, contracts are signed digitally via Class 3 DSC, and payments flow through RBI-compliant escrow accounts until delivery is confirmed.

Who founded BharatTender?

Rankit Singh is the co-founder and CEO. He founded the company in 2025 alongside Sanyam Jain and Anshul Kochar, a team with combined experience across startups, procurement, finance, and supply chains.

Where is BharatTender based?

BharatTender is headquartered in Gurugram, Haryana, India. Its customer base spans industrial hubs including Ludhiana, Surat, and Hyderabad, with coverage across steel, textiles, construction, IT, packaging, chemicals, logistics, and agriculture.

How big is the market BharatTender is targeting?

The company sizes India’s private B2B procurement opportunity at ₹110 lakh crore, a figure that includes the 6.3 crore private businesses the company says still source through phone calls, WhatsApp conversations, spreadsheets, and personal networks.