teaJunction
mjunction is one of India’s largest B2B e-commerce companies. teaJunction was a 0→1 bet: bring digital auction based mechanisms as an alternative to decades-old, relationship-driven wholesale tea trade.
India’s wholesale tea trade ran on opaque, relationship-bound auctions with inadequate demand and poor price discovery.
You can’t launch a two-sided marketplace half-built. Liquidity is the product.
Designed for trust first — in a relationship-bound trade, the digital mechanism had to feel as reliable as the handshake it replaced.
Sequenced supply and demand carefully so neither side showed up to an empty room.
Focused on the premium tea growers initially, who strongly believed they were not getting the right value for their tea.
Building a marketplace in a traditional industry is 20% product and 80% earning the right to change how money moves. The tech was the easier part; the trust was the work. This is where I learned that mechanisms - not features - are what compound in a marketplace.