B2B2C is the model where you sell to a business that sells to the end customer — and, unlike plain distribution, you participate in that last mile rather than losing sight of it. The brand provides the range, the pricing, the storefront and the payment rails. The partner provides the territory, the stock and the delivery. The consumer gets a local shop that happens to be running your catalogue.
It is the most common shape in Indian distribution and the least well served by commerce software, because it needs two things at once: a real consumer storefront, and a real distributor relationship underneath it.
A storefront per partner, on your catalogue
Each partner gets a microsite: their own address, their own display name and theme, serving the store that the partner already resolves to in your distribution model. It is a channel over the range you already publish — not a copy of your catalogue that someone has to keep in step.
Because the microsite is a channel, everything channel-scoped applies to it: its own currency, its own oversell policy, its own payment account, its own coupon scoping. A partner can run a local promotion without touching the brand's national campaign.
The consumer order finds the right partner
Serviceability is declared, not guessed. Each microsite lists the areas it will actually deliver to — by pincode, or by drawn polygon where a pincode is too coarse — with a priority that decides the winner when two partners overlap.
A consumer entering their pincode learns immediately whether anyone serves them, and an order placed in a covered area is stamped with that partner as the selling organization. It lands in the partner's ordinary order list and is fulfilled with the tooling they already use — not a separate portal they have to remember to check.
The same machinery answers the brand-site question: a consumer arriving on your national storefront, in a pincode a distributor covers, can be routed to that distributor rather than served centrally.
Money that settles without a spreadsheet
Commission is the part that quietly destroys these programmes. It is usually reconstructed monthly from exports, in a spreadsheet, by someone who then has to defend it.
xMatix accrues it as it happens. Each order produces a settlement line at the commission rate in force when that order was sold, which is the detail that makes the arrangement defensible: renegotiating a partner's rate today does not silently restate last quarter's statement. Lines roll into a periodic settlement with gross, commission, net and order count, which moves from accrued to statemented to settled.
Payments can be taken by the brand or by the partner's own linked merchant account, depending on who is the merchant of record in your arrangement.
What the brand keeps, and what the partner keeps
- The brand keeps the catalogue, the pricing policy, the storefront experience, the customer relationship and the demand signal — including which pincodes are asking for products nobody stocks.
- The partner keeps the fulfilment, the local relationship and the margin on their own territory, and gets a consumer storefront they did not have to build.
- Neither maintains a second catalogue, a second stock pool or a second order pipeline.
Where it starts
Most B2B2C programmes start as one of the other two models. A distributor network already ordering online (B2B) adds consumer-facing storefronts. Or a brand that launched direct (D2C) needs an answer to channel conflict and discovers the answer is to route orders to the partner who serves the customer. Either way the addition is a channel, some service areas and a commission rate — not a new system.
Common questions
Does each partner need their own catalogue?
No. A microsite is a channel over the store the partner already resolves to in your distribution model, serving the range you publish centrally. There is no per-partner catalogue to maintain or keep in step.
How does an order reach the right partner?
Each microsite declares the areas it serves, by pincode or polygon, with a priority that resolves overlaps. An order from a covered area is stamped with that partner as the selling organization and appears in their normal order list.
What happens if two partners cover the same pincode?
The priority on the service area decides. It is an explicit, reviewable setting rather than an implicit rule, so overlaps are a decision someone made rather than an accident.
How is partner commission calculated?
Each order accrues a settlement line at the commission rate in force at the time of that sale, and lines roll up into a periodic settlement with gross, commission, net and order count. Changing a partner's rate does not restate past periods.
Who takes the payment — the brand or the partner?
Either. A channel names the merchant account it uses, so payment can be taken centrally by the brand or through a partner's own linked account, depending on who is the merchant of record in your arrangement.
Can a partner run their own promotions?
Yes. Coupon campaigns can be scoped to a channel, and a microsite is a channel — so a partner can run a local offer without affecting a national campaign.