Vroozi, Inc.

In the beginning, Shaz Khan set out to solve a basic problem: “How do we allow employees to shop like they do at home and eliminate the long upfront implementation time and cost?” .

Shaz had been implementing ERP procurement and supply chain systems for Fortune 500 companies since 1997. Over the last decade, he became increasingly puzzled by the amount of time it takes to automate a single business process as harmless as procurement. Eventually, it became clear to him that customers are consumers who are used to shopping online in the comfort of their home. Sitting at the W Hotel in San Francisco on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, Shaz penned the idea of smartOCI to tackle the world of B2B procurement from a consumer point of view.

Soon, Shaz phoned a previous business contact Rich Chala who had been building online exchange marketplaces for grocers and designing supply chain platforms for mobile devices. However, his ideas on usability and design were ahead of the hardware and telecommunication capability at the time. They bounced some ideas back and forth and eventually came up with the idea to build the world's largest, most user-friendly B2B eCommerce search engine and marketplace platform. Rich joined the Vroozi team in 2010. The idea was well documented…on a paper napkin.

In 2012, they met another business partner, Steve Olds, who has been building technology companies successfully for the last 3 decades (he started in kindergarten :-). Steve became increasingly convinced that consumer shopping technology can disrupt enterprise procurement platform and making enterprise application consumer-able directly from the website will enable company of all sizes to benefit from technology. He joined as Vroozi CEO in early 2014.