An Overview
MOLBASE was found in 2013, headquartered in Shanghai, China. We have been dedicated to providing a leading SaaS-powered and data-driven integrated service platform for chemical e-commerce designed for small and medium-sized chemical-related businesses where various activities including chemical searching, promotion, inquiry, transaction, and payment, etc. can be done. On one hand, chemical suppliers can design and set up their online stores, manage products and inventory, process orders and payments, build customer relationships and leverage analytics and reporting on the platform. In addition, Suppliers can also to manage their business on the go via our ios and Android APPs, “Chemical circle(化工圈)” and “chemical transportation circle(化运圈)”.
On the other hand, buyers can also search for products, choose appropriate product suppliers to place orders, and facilitate the transaction with many value-added services including supply chain financial services, business intelligence services, logistic and warehousing services.
In the traditional chemical distribution system, there are many intermediaries (distributors, traders, retailers) between the suppliers and buyers, who makes the chemical transaction procedures redundant, costing and low-efficient.
Technology and the internet are now transforming commerce, digitizing the chemical industry, and disrupting the traditional chemical distribution system accordingly. At MOLBASE, we built our platform based on the most comprehensive chemical database and SaaS tools we have developed, to address the problems with the traditional distribution system, with the aim of making chemical transaction simple and easy. A rich ecosystem of suppliers, buyers, bank and non-bank financial institutions, logistic & warehousing companies, and other partners has emerged around the MOLBASE platform. Molbase’s highly extensible platform can be expanded through our application program interface, or API, and the Apps including “Chemical circle”, and “Chemical transportation circle”. This ecosystem helps drive the growth of our customer base, which in turn further accelerates growth of the ecosystem.
The MOLBASE platform has been engineered to enterprise-level standards and functionality to provide one stop shop services to customers. The platform provides customers with an intuitive user experience that requires no up-front training to implement and use, enabling customers to conduct transaction with high efficiency. We believe the platform is mission critical for all of our customers who depend on us for the latest data, information and technologies in chemical e-commerce. We are constantly innovating and enhancing our platform. Our continuously deployed, multi-tenant architecture ensures that all of our customers are always using the latest technology.
MOLBASE’s mission is to make chemical transaction simple and easy for everyone. We believe we can help discover customers’ own potential. Thanks to our expanded business coverage and user acquisition efforts, we have been accumulating an exponentially growing customers and suppliers base. As of December 31, 2018, we had accumulated over 200,000 registered users on our Platform, and had built a nationwide supplier network, covering 376 cities in China. We also provide various value-added services as a part of our ecosystem, such as our business intelligence service, membership service, financing information services, logistic and warehousing service, etc.
Our business has experienced rapid growth. Our total GMV increased from RMB 39.6 billion ($5.82B) in 2016, to RMB 83.2 billion ($12.2B) in 2017 and to RMB 169.7 billion ($24.9B) in 2018, showing a year-on-year growth of more than 100%. We have become the largest service platform for chemical e-commerce in China in terms of GMV. In addition, MOLBASE has been listed among “Top 100 B2B Industry in China” and ranked the first in the chemical e-commerce industry for three consecutive years (2016-2018) in a row.