Trafigura Franchise

Franchise News India, Franchise In India,Franchise In Mumbai,Commodity trading giant Trafigura will invest at least $200-300 million (Rs 1,200-1,800 crore) in the next one year in Lykos, its new e-commerce company, which aims to sell base metals directly to small and medium enterprises in India.

Switzerland-based Trafigura wants to sell aluminium, copper, lead, tin and zinc through an online retail store to SMEs, which make for about 40% of the $8.4 billion primary metal commodities market in India, according to the company.

The money will be used to set up warehouses, online trading platform, and to source metal from the producers.

“Lykos is a trading platform, which allows sale of metals by Trafigura at the moment,” said Raoul Bajaj, CEO at Trafigura India. “At a later date, we will start adding third-party products so they (metal producers) can start using Lykos as a distribution arm.”

Lykos will be considered successful when bigger producers use it as their distribution arm, Bajaj said.India’s base metal market is dominated by the likes of Vedanta Group and Hindalco, which currently have their own sales network.

Lykos for now has built three warehouses in India -Rajasthan, Gujarat and West Bengal -to store the metal consignments. It may look at setting up its own logistics network once they attain scale in the country.

To scale up the warehouse infrastructure in India faster Trafigura plans to rope in franchisees within the next 18-24 months. “Franchise is for the next phase of growth. We have three warehouses and we may do more of our own and in combination of that. There is an opportunity to to build a network of 25-30 warehouses,” said B Anand, CFO at Trafigura India

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