1Buy.AI, an AI-first procurement and cost-reduction platform, has raised ₹32.5 crore ($3.9 million) in a seed funding round led by 100Unicorns. The round saw significant participation from marquee investors including Ashish Kacholia, Gruhas (the investment vehicle of Nikhil Kamath and Abhijeet Pai), and US-based FJ Labs, alongside several existing customers.
The Delhi-based startup will deploy the fresh capital to accelerate the development of its compliant SaaS architecture, expand its team, and build out “global data pipes” to support international expansion across the US, Europe, and Southeast Asia.
“Bloomberg + Amazon + eBay” for Electronics
Founded in 2023 by the Midas Touch trio—Nitin Jain (co-founder of OfBusiness), Visham Sikand (founder of Goals101), and Pradeep Paliwal (former CTO at TBO and RateGain)—1Buy.AI is on a mission to digitize the $2.3 trillion global electronics procurement market.
Despite being a board-level priority, electronics sourcing remains one of the least digitized enterprise functions, still largely reliant on fragmented spreadsheets and manual distributor quotes. 1Buy.AI replaces this with an integrated “operating system” built on three pillars:
-
1Data (Intelligence): Acts as a “Bloomberg for Components,” providing independent global price benchmarks, alternate part discovery, and risk alerts for over 25 million MPNs.
-
1Source (Execution): An “Amazon for Procurement” layer that enables compliant, end-to-end sourcing from vetted global suppliers with transparent landed-cost comparisons.
-
1Xcess (Liquidity): An “eBay for Components” marketplace that uses structured bidding and reverse auctions to help manufacturers monetize excess and obsolete inventory.
“Electronics procurement represents one of the largest yet least digitized enterprise decision surfaces globally,” noted 100Unicorns. “The team’s track record of building multiple unicorns, coupled with early customer-led validation, positions them to define a new category.”
Delivering 5–10% Savings in Months
1Buy.AI’s platform is designed to layer on top of a client’s existing ERP (like SAP or Oracle). By ingesting and normalizing Bill of Materials (BOM) data, the AI identifies pricing gaps and supply chain risks in real-time.
Key Performance Metrics:
-
Cost Reduction: Enables manufacturers to achieve 5–10% savings on active BOMs within the first few months.
-
Operational Speed: Reduces RFQ (Request for Quote) cycle times by up to 40%.
-
Scale: Already processing component data for several of India’s largest electronics players, who collectively source nearly ₹4,500 crore annually.
[Image: A infographic showing the 1Buy.AI “Flywheel” – how BOM data integration leads to better pricing benchmarks, attracting more global suppliers and further reducing costs for OEMs.]
Investor Insight: Solving “Real, On-the-Ground Problems”
“1Buy.AI is built to solve real, on-the-ground problems—cost volatility, sourcing risk, and excess inventory—by combining data with execution, not dashboards alone,” said Nitin Jain, Co-founder of 1Buy.AI. The oversubscription of the round—reportedly by four times—and the participation of existing clients as investors underscore the platform’s strong product-market fit in an era of global supply chain volatility.
By: Vanshika Tayal
