If you ask us, Icarus wasted his time sticking wax onto feathers. He should have simply moved to India, built a logistics app (since he was looking for a mobility solution) and waited for demonetisation and Goods and Services Tax (GST) rollout. Wait, what? These disruptive changes brought many sectors and companies crashing to the ground! Yes, that is true. But they also gave wing to many B2B start-ups. Udaan became a unicorn in the shortest time, in three years since its founding. A handful of other start-ups, including Rivigo and Delhivery, too, got billion-dollar valuations. In June 2019, IndiaMART, which runs a marketplace for businesses, saw an impressive listing — 21% premium over its issue price of Rs.973. Within three months, its price doubled and today, its market cap is at $0.8 billion. Internet firms rarely see such success on the trading floor. The company, founded in 1996 by Dinesh Agarwal as an exports marketplace, made a clever pivot to the domestic market in 2008. Today, the listing platform has more than 130,000 suppliers. “In the early 2000s, China began to dominate international trade, which directly impacted Indian exports. At the same time, domestic consumption started to grow. That’s when I decided to change our market focus,” says Agarwal. Of course, this two-decade-old company is a bit long in the tooth to be a start-up, but its success is illustrative of the optimism around the B2B segment in India.