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Q&A: Glenn Meakem

Glenn Meakem, CEO and Co-founder of FreeMarkets, a prominent online sourcing solutions company, loves nothing more than a good fight. In 1990, while still at Harvard Business School, he took a break to lead a combat engineer platoon in the first Gulf War. But 39-year-old Meakem is now in the scrappiest fight of his life, as he positions FreeMarkets as the undisputed leader in Business-to-Business (B2B) online space. On a visit to India, he spoke to BT Online's Venkatesha Babu.

Q: Online market places... haven't we heard it all before? Aren't they supposed to roll over and play dead now?

A: Ha, you must be referring to B2C marketplaces. B2B marketplaces are thriving and expanding. FreeMarkets was the pioneer in this space, and we are the market leaders. While working at GE as a business development manager in 1994, I remember having proposed a method of sourcing things on the web which would cut costs and improve efficiency, but the proposal was not followed up.

Earlier, getting suppliers to bid on something, collating their bids and awarding was a tedious, expensive and time-consuming method. What FreeMarkets pioneered in 1995 was revolutionary. Sourcing things on the web --- which helped clients lower costs and improve supply management processes.

FreeMarkets today operates in markets like Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America and North America, and has helped customers around the world source more than $45 billion in goods and services in over 200 different supply verticals.

The company is profitable with revenues of close to $200 million per year and over 1,000 employees working in 14 countries. As far as market perceptions are concerned, one should be careful not to read too much into it. When we were a $23 million company, our M-Cap was bid up to $13 billion. So while perceptions might change, the fundamental value delivery we provides customers remain unchanged.

Q: What is the India story ? Aren't there already players like 01markets.com, India Markets Online and so on?

A: In India, FreeMarkets began its operations in 2000. The company is headquartered in Gurgaon and operates from its offices located in Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore and Jamshedpur. Over the last 3 years, FreeMarkets has successfully implemented sourcing solutions for over 30 large Indian companies and has sourced nearly $1 billion in market volume, resulting in savings of over $150 million. FreeMarkets has over 60 pre cent market share in third party sourcing in India. We have clients like Reliance Industries, JK Corp, Carrier Aircon, Indo Rama, Tata Engineering, Dabur, TVS, Bayer, Du Pont and Johnson & Johnson.

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