IndiaMART has moved large parts of its content behind logins, blocked unrestricted website scraping, and withheld proprietary data from both Google Search and AI agents. CEO Dinesh Agarwal told analysts the company is prepared to forgo 10-20% of unique business inquiries to protect its data moat. Unique enquiries fell 14% year-on-year to 27 million in the July-September quarter and are 10-15% below peak levels. Agarwal attributed the decline partly to buyers shifting toward AI search and partly to IndiaMART’s own restrictions on data that previously fed those systems. Google AI Overviews now appear in 50% or more of searches. The company remains open to licensing redacted, non-personal data for AI training if it can generate revenue but will keep retrieval and agent access restricted. It is also spending Rs 8-10 crore a quarter on performance advertising to offset the reach loss.
IndiaMART has moved large parts of its content behind logins, blocked unrestricted website scraping, and withheld proprietary data from both Google Search and AI agents. CEO Dinesh Agarwal told analysts the company is prepared to forgo 10-20% of unique business inquiries to protect its data moat. Unique enquiries fell 14% year-on-year to 27 million in the July-September quarter and are 10-15% below peak levels. Agarwal attributed the decline partly to buyers shifting toward AI search and partly to IndiaMART’s own restrictions on data that previously fed those systems. Google AI Overviews now appear in 50% or more of searches. The company remains open to licensing redacted, non-personal data for AI training if it can generate revenue but will keep retrieval and agent access restricted. It is also spending Rs 8-10 crore a quarter on performance advertising to offset the reach loss.