Procol digitizing Indian procurement
Gaurav Baheti, CEO of Procol, on bringing procurement online in India
This reveals that Procol is selling a workflow change, not just a software replacement. In most Indian enterprises it targets, procurement still means buyers calling vendors, collecting quotes in email, comparing them in Excel, and sending purchase orders manually, so the first job is to turn a fragmented offline process into one shared system. That is why faster onboarding, mobile supplier access, and quick time to value matter more than deep ERP breadth at the start.
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Procol is focused on sourcing, the part of procurement where teams gather requirements, invite suppliers, collect bids, negotiate, and award the order. It says this is where customers see the clearest ROI, with purchase cycles cut from two to four weeks for small orders and average savings of 5% to 6%.
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The legacy alternative in these accounts is usually SAP or Oracle, not another local startup. Those systems cover broad source to settle workflows and supplier portals, but they are built as large integrated suites, which fits global enterprises better than Indian procurement teams still moving off phone, email, and spreadsheets.
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Modern procurement startups like Zip are attacking the same pain point from a different angle. They start with easy request intake, approvals, vendors, purchase orders, and payments, while Procol built around supplier participation and negotiation in a market where many vendors only had mobile access and could not rely on desktops.
The market is likely to shift from offline sourcing straight to lightweight, faster tools, not through a long stop in heavyweight procurement suites. As more Indian enterprises formalize spending controls, the winners will be products that get buyers and suppliers live quickly, prove savings fast, and then expand from sourcing into the rest of procure to pay.