B2B at Scale: Powering India's largest B2B Tech Distributor

Redington, India’s largest IT distributor with $10B+ revenue, partners with 450+ brands to reach over 70,000 channel partners worldwide. While they had managed to make their initial sales online through another ecommerce platform, the company recognised the need for a more future-ready and scalable solution. Redington proactively sought a platform that could support its complex business models and drive long-term growth.

Together with Thoughtworks, they made the decision to build a fully interconnected commerce system with Medusa. The new setup supports advanced functionalities like custom product models for subscriptions, made-to-order products, partner-specific price lists, and real-time inventory and pricing sync with the ERP. All supported by a tailored UX experience for their partners.

The search for a flexible foundation

Redington’s vision for a modernized commerce ecosystem required a platform that could support its partners with custom catalogs and pricing, enable multiple sales models including subscriptions and made-to-order products, integrate seamlessly with ERP and PIM systems for real-time data and inventory synchronization, and allow flexible customizations without compromising upgradability.

After evaluating various options, Redington chose Medusa for its flexible, modular architecture, which allowed it to build complex features while maintaining scalability and upgradeability. For instance, Medusa's workflow capabilities, which were used to integrate seamlessly with their ERP and PIM, allowed for real-time data synchronization for inventory, pricing, and order processing.

2025: Building an interconnected B2B platform

With Medusa selected as a strategic enabler, Redington collaborated with Thoughtworks to develop a commerce platform that seamlessly integrated over 15 systems through four key areas:

• System of Engagement related to all user-facing components across web and mobile mainly powered within the Next.js storefront and serviced by Medusa's Storefront API.
• System of Insights integrating with external analytics systems to gather user behavior data and actionable insights, driving informed decision-making and platform optimization.
• System of Integration connecting internal systems, including the ERP, Warehouse Management, and Fintech, through Medusa’s workflow engine.
• Supporting Systems such as PIM and CMS were integrated with Medusa, while a custom payment aggregator module was built within Medusa to manage multiple payment gateways.

The Redington team devised much of the integration logic using Medusa’s workflow tooling, while the modular architecture allowed the team flexibility.

Scalable solutions for diverse commerce models

Redington operates across multiple inventory and commerce models to meet the diverse needs of their partners. Larger brands typically prefer the stock-and-sell model, while smaller brands opt for on-demand procurement, avoiding the need to invest in inventory.

Medusa’s modular architecture helps Redington set up partner-specific workflows and real-time integration with the ERP to seamlessly support a variety of different commerce models:

• Stock-and-sell: Inventory updates are synchronized with the ERP via Medusa’s Inventory Module and APIs, ensuring real-time stock availability during order processing. Medusa continuously fetches the most up-to-date inventory data from the ERP, ensuring accurate order fulfillment without manual intervention.
• Made-to-order: Custom workflows in Medusa automate the creation and management of orders for made-to-order products, with procurement and production steps triggered after an order is placed. This model is essential for Redington to handle products that are not pre-stocked.
• Inventory-less model: By leveraging Medusa’s workflows, Redington triggers procurement and fulfillment at a brand partner only when an order is placed, eliminating the need for pre-stored inventory for some products and brands.
• Subscription services: Medusa’s API-driven architecture supports recurring billing and subscription management, seamlessly integrating with external billing and licensing systems to automate renewals and handle subscription-based products.

Streamlined product and inventory management

With Medusa, Redington’s product flow seamlessly integrates their ERP, PIM, and Medusa, enabling real-time data synchronization without redundancy. Medusa replaced a highly manual ordering process - where order details were received via email and manually entered into the ERP - with automated workflows to reduce errors and inefficiency. Inventory management also became more streamlined, with stock updates in the ERP automatically synchronized across systems, ensuring accuracy and operational efficiency.

Driving performance through open source

The entire project was built in around 6 months and delivered on time and within budget, which was a major success for the company. The new platform, built with Medusa and Next.js on the frontend, launched in January 2025, delivering significant performance improvements:

• 87% improvement in average response time through better system integration
• 24x improvement in throughput handling significantly more requests per minute than the previous platform

The uplift could also be felt in the operational efficiency among the more than 500 business managers who use Medusa as part of their day-to-day backend operations. They specifically highlighted the platform's user-friendly design.

Expanding further

Encouraged by these results, Redington is expanding Medusa’s use to their Middle East operations and plans to migrate their entire ecommerce ecosystem within two years.

Medusa’s proven flexibility and ability to orchestrate complex workflows has made it an integral part of the tech foundation for Redington. With this expansion, Redington is redefining B2B commerce in India by pioneering the use of open-source technology at enterprise scale - powering over $4B in digital business with Medusa.