Throughout his career, Vishal Patil used to innovate solutions for his customers in manufacturing working with leading industries. It was during this phase he identified the pain areas of SMEs who are vendors to OEMs as well as their Tier1 suppliers – creating RFQs, understanding the technical requirements and also use the available infrastructure in its full potential – VendoSmart was founded.
Vishal, who is in his early thirties and alumni of MIT Manipal, is a Mechanical engineer who possesses a great fascination to enhance the manufacturing status of the country. From being a part of KPO, Robotic firms to building his own organization; Vishal has witnessed different phases of life and his parts of struggles.
In an exclusive talk with the Machine Maker, Vishal narrates his phenomenal journey in the industry. At a time when people are looking to part ways from the manufacturing industry, Vishal stays firm in building up the stones to strengthen Indian manufacturing in different ways. He has more than a decade's experience in Process automation, Industrial automation, Robotics and Intelligent systems development. Having studied Mechatronics at NTTF and obtaining a Mechanical degree from MIT, Manipal, he has a dire passion for industrial automation and robotics.
Realising his passion and interest towards robotics and automation, Vishal worked with Precision Automation and Robotics India (PARI) for close to six years and then switched to Gurugram based Hi-Tech Robotic Systemz Limited. Here at Hi-Tech, he worked closely in developing the ADAS products. His contribution in both the firms involve new product development, turnkey automation & robotics projects also building process automation to increase operational efficiency and throughput.
Ideation of making the vendors smart
Working towards enhancing the manufacturing processes in the previous organisations, Vishal faced major difficulties in gathering different resources for the projects he was involved in. He spent his days hopping from vendor to vendor, vetting, tracking, follow up and be with them to monitor projects, but that did not yield expected results. This process would repeat for every project, leaving him with a feeling that there is a strong need for organising things down the line.
This finally left him with an idea to organise the manufacturing processes in the small and medium scale industries. Taking a risk of leaving his job and initiating a platform on his own, he came up with an idea that can help the tier-2 and tier-3 industries moulding up their custom manufacturing process.
Vendosmart- A Platform that empowers the vendor
Entering the shoes of the vendors, Vishal could easily understand their plight and henceforth reached to a conclusion of building a platform that could empower the vendors and keep their company’s process organised.
“Vendosmart is a new way of sourcing custom manufactured parts. Saving the sourcing, comparing and negotiation time and cost for buyers while maximizing the manufacturing potential for manufacturers. The platform is a one-stop shop for all custom manufacturing needs.”- exclaims Vishal.
The idea of the platform is to Standardize, Organize and Digitize the small and medium businesses in manufacturing and their processes. The working of Vendosmart is quite easy and innovative. This is a unique approach unlike other B2B vendor discovery platform, which not only helps discover vendors but aids the users with tools for seamless business transactions.
From the buyer’s side: A buyer just needs to drag and drop a drawing file that has been created, fill minimum information about it and the RFQ is ready! The buyer then either publishes it on Vendosmart for registered users to bid or send it privately to selected vendors as per requirements.
In the Vendor’s front: Once the drawing is uploaded on the portal, the sellers who match the machine requirements are notified of receiving an RPQ. After this, the vendor can start bidding on the prices of the machine maintaining the transparency of the process, with progress tracking tool. The platform also has a quoting tool which shows a bidding comparison to the buyers.
Believing in delivering the best, Vendosmart has been formed to provide transparency in each and every process during manufacturing. It informs the buyers about where the process of manufacturing has reached and how much process is yet to be done. Along with registering the vendors, even their machines are registered which they can showcase as an available resource for other vendors to rent the machine or offload a suitable job to that particular vendor.
The organisation has provided a three-month trial to the vendors and is absolutely free to the buyers. After the trial period Vendosmart charges a nominal subscription fee depending on number of process one opts for, which is the lowest in the market as Vishal claims.
“We plan to have onboard 500 users the next five months and provide assisted execution for large and complex manufacturing assignments.”- quotes Vishal on his future plans for the portal.
On the response of the people associated, Vishal says, “The buyers are extremely happy with the initiative as it minimises their load of sending excel sheets via email, obtaining quotations, drawings and have manual quote comparison and negotiations carried out over phone calls or emails, having no measurable records at the end of the process. They are happy to have everything under one banner. Meanwhile, the vendors are looking out for some customised improvements to suit their processes in the same and we are working towards it.”
The vision of Vishal is to bring the custom manufacturing in India on sleek. The need is to make India as the first choice on the global map for manufacturing.
Interested to know more his journey and Vendosmart write to him at vishal@vendosmart.com.
