Infibeam

Infibeam Avenues Limited
Infibeam logo
Type of business Public
Type of site
 E-commerce
Traded as NSE: INFIBEAM
BSE: 539807
Founded 2007 (2007)
Headquarters Ahmedabad, India
Coordinates 23°01′24″N 72°32′19″E / 23.023285°N 72.538527°E / 23.023285; 72.538527
Area served India, Middle East
Founder(s) vishal Mehta
Industry Internet
Services Online shopping
Revenue ₹300 crores/₹3 billion[1]
Employees 1300 (in 2015)
Website www.infibeam.com
Alexa rank 5,707 (July 2016)[2]

Infibeam Avenues Limited is an Indian internet and e-commerce conglomerate involved in digital payments, online retailing, e-commerce software and internet services. The company is headquartered in Ahmedabad, India.

Infibeam is an online retailer for books, electronics, and automobiles in India, and is listed on the BSE and the National Stock Exchange of India. Started in 2007, the company has offices in Ahmedabad, Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru, and has a total of 1300 employees.[3][4] Infibeam launched an e-book reader, Infibeam Pi, its successor Pi2, and a media device, Infibeam Phi. Infibeam became India's first E-commerce company to file an IPO, in July 2015.[5][6][7]

History

Infibeam was founded in 2007 by Vishal Mehta, a Cornell and MIT Sloan alumnus. After working for Dell and Amazon.com in the US for five years, Mehta returned to India in 2007 and started Infibeam along with a group of Amazon employees.[8][9] He funded the company by selling his personal assets rather than opting for external equity funding.[10] The company was started with an initial capital of ₹100-150 million.[11] Infibeam.com started as an automobile portal in 2007, but later turned into an online retailer.[12] In 2010, Infibeam launched 'Pi', India's first e-book reader.[13][14]

Acquisitions

In 2008, Infibeam acquired Picsquare.com, a personalised photo printing website. In 2014, it acquired Odigma, a digital marketing company, for US$5 million.[15] In 2017, it signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to acquire DRC Systems, a provider of enterprise ERP solutions and customized software for e-commerce applications.[16]

In 2017, Infibeam has merged with CCAVenue, India`s largest payment gateway by transactions, in a deal that valued the payment gateway at $289 million.[17] Also, in 2018 Infibeam acquired Snapdeal's wholly owned subsidiary Unicommerce - a Cloud-Based E-Commerce Order Management Software[18] for ₹ 120 Crore.[19]

Lately, in May 2018 Infibeam Inc. has acquired 100% shareholding of Vavian International Ltd.[20] The deal was valued $1.17 million[21], this made Vavian International a direct subsidiary of Infibeam Global EMEA FZ-LLC, a subsidiary of Infibeam Incorporation Ltd.[22]

Businesses

Infibeam's businesses include online retailing through its flagship website 'infibeam.com', e-commerce platform software service through 'buildabazaar.com', e-commerce marketplace 'dhamaal.com' and its own branded e-book reader. The strategy of Infibeam was described by Forbes as "that seems to defy most standard models".[23] The turnover of the company was reported to be ₹10 billion as of November 2013.[1]

Digital Payments

CCAvenue is one of the largest digital payment platform with operations in India. The payment gateway caters to more than 100,000 merchants across industry verticals including online retail, education, hospitality, travel, and event management, amongst others.

Online retailing

Infibeam.com, the online retail website of the company, sells books, electronics and lifestyle products.[24] The website has a selection of 12 million products across books, electronics, lifestyle, gifts and media.[9] In 2011, the company established Infibeam Logistics, its own logistics arm in major Indian cities.[25] In September 2010, infibeam was among Economic Times's Top 5 Digital Brands in the e-commerce category.[26] Infibeam's acquisition of customer base at very low cost has been recorded as a B-school case study by Ivey Publishing.[27] Infibeam is the only authorised online seller of iPhones in India.[28][29] Infibeam maintains its bestsellers list for books sold on the site. Picsquare.com, owned by Infibeam, is a digital photo printing and personalised gifts website.[30]

E-commerce platform

Buildabazaar is a Saas platform built by Infibeam with operations in India and MiddleEast. The company initially extended its e-commerce platform to build online stores for HiDesign, TTK Prestige[31] and Crossword Bookstores[32] and NDTV Shopping[33][34] In 2011, the e-commerce platform was opened to everyone through Buildabazaar, which allows users to create their own web store.[35] Buildabazaar was awarded ‘The Game Changing Idea of The Year’ Award by The Economic Times at ET RETAIL AWARD 2014.[36] The platform was launched in the Middle East region in 2014. It has 30,000 stores as of March 2015.[37]

ThemeJungle

The theme store- ThemeJungle[38] is subsidiary of BuildaBazaar. It is conglomeration of different themes brought under one roof by Infibeam. The website was launched in January 2018 majorly to support BuildaBazaar stores. It is a marketplace of various themes designed by professional designers. Till May 2018, ThemeJungle has uploaded over 100+ free premium themes.

Music streaming platform

Infibeam Digital Entertainment (INDENT), a subsidiary of Infibeam established in 2012, builds Music Streaming and Download Platform solutions for Music Labels, Brands and OEMs.[39] In 2013, the company built Sony Music's Jive HD streaming and downloading app embedded in Sony's Xperia smartphones.[40]

Digital marketing services

The company offers Digital Marketing Services through its subsidiary ODIGMA, which it acquired in 2014.[41] ODIGMA employs 70 people and serves digital marketing campaigns for around 400 brands.[42]

Generic top level domain name registry

Infibeam owns the license of the generic top level domain (GTLD) '.ooo' granted by Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). It launched the '.ooo' domain for trademark holders on 22 September 2014.[43][44]

Logistics aggregation platform

ShipDroid, a logistics aggregation platform was launched in January 2015, to provide uniformity of logistics services to small merchants across all courier partners. The platform covers 20,000 pincodes across 600 cities. The platform allows merchants to choose mode of delivery such as surface, rail or air mode and also can opt for delivery commitment SLAs such as express delivery or regular delivery.[45][46][47]

Payments

Infibeam invested $8.9 million in payment gateway CCAvenue in 2016. In Feb 2017, it announced further investment and likely merger with CCAvenue. In May 2018, Infibeam Inc invested $1.17 million acquiring the 100% stake in Vavian International Ltd, a UAE based payment gateway. Vivian claims to process of about 2,500 transactions with a transaction value of AED 2 million. [48]

Marketplace

In August 2013, Infibeam launched the e-commerce marketplace Dhamaal.com in association with CCAvenue. Dhamaal has a selection of 15 million products. The website is built on Buildabazaar platform, and is also extended as a co-branded marketplace with 50 Indian banks.[49]

E-book reader

Infibeam Pi

In February 2010, Infibeam launched Pi, an e-book reader that uses E-Ink electronic paper technology.[8] Pi has a six-inch screen with eight level grayscale non-backlit display.[50][51] The device has the capability to play music files, read Word documents and also supports 13 Indian languages.[8][52] It has an internal memory of 512 MB, that can store 300 books and supports external memory up to 4 GB.[53] The device, which is less than 10 millimetres (0.39 inches), weighs 180 grams (6.3 ounces).[54]

Pi2

In 2011, Infibeam launched the second version of its e-book reader and named it Pi2.[55] Pi2 is a touchscreen device and has wireless connectivity. It has 2 GB of internal memory and expandable up to 32 GB through external SD card slot. The battery power is claimed to last up to 8,000 page reads.[55] The company has over 500 thousand e-books on its web store which can be directly accessed from the ebook reader through Wi-Fi to purchase e-books.[56] Infibeam followed up the Pi2 with an Android tablet called Phi.[57]

Financials and Fall in share price (2018)

Though the company had posted healthy profits after taxes in the previous two financial years, the company posted a net profit after tax of less than 1.2 crores in FS 2016-17.[58] However this did not prevent its share price from continuing to soar up in 2017 and 2018 as stock analysts continued to forecast high share prices. Finally, on 29 September 2018, the company's share price crashed by 70%, from Rs. 212 in the previous week to Rs. 53.8, after a whatsapp message circulated sparking rumours of the company's poor financial health.[59]

Recognition

In Feb 2018 Infibeam was distinguished by The Financial Times and Statista as part of FT1000 High Growth Companies Asia -Pacific 2018. Infibeam ranked 418 among FT 1000 High Growth Companies in Asia-Pacific Region.[60]

Infibeam was conferred with Consumer Durable & E-Retail of the Year Award at E-Retail Award 2018[61] by Franchise India held on 16 - 17th April, 2018 in JW Marriott Hotel, New Delhi.[62] At the same award function Infibeam's subsidiary CC Avenue was conferred with "Best Innovation in E-Commerce Payment". [63]

References

  1. 1 2 Umarji, Vinay (1 November 2013). "Infibeam to foray into UAE market". Business Standard. Retrieved 6 November 2013.
  2. ↑ "infibeam.com Site Overview". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2016-05-05.
  3. ↑ "Ahmedabad-based e-tailer Infibeam to increase headcount by 2015". The Times Of India. 9 May 2013.
  4. ↑ Rai, Anand. "How E-com Firm Infibeam Is Managing Without External Funding". techcircle.in. Retrieved 25 April 2012.
  5. ↑ REUTERS. "Infibeam files for IPO in first ecommerce listing". In.reuters.com.
  6. ↑ "Infibeam Files for IPO in Indias First E-Commerce Listing – NDTVProfit.com". Profit.ndtv.com. 1 July 2015. Retrieved 31 January 2016.
  7. ↑ Share on Twitter (1 July 2015). "IndiGo and Infibeam file for Rs 3,000 crore IPOs – Times of India". Timesofindia.indiatimes.com. Retrieved 31 January 2016.
  8. 1 2 3 Sruthijith KK (28 January 2010). "Indian innovation to give Amazon's Kindle run for its money". The Economic Times. Retrieved 29 April 2013.
  9. 1 2 "Infibeam Expands Logistics To Mumbai And Bangalore". SiliconIndia. Retrieved 10 August 2013.
  10. ↑ S. Prem Kumar. "Infibeam's double-edged strategy". The Smart CEO. Retrieved 29 April 2013.
  11. ↑ Suresh P. Iyengar (6 October 2013). "No competitors here, all are partners". The Hindu Business Line. Retrieved 8 December 2014.
  12. ↑ Pahwa, Nikhil. "Confirmed: Infibeam Acquires Picsquare.com". MediaNama. Retrieved 29 April 2013.
  13. ↑ "India gets 2nd e-book reader Wink XTS". The Times of India. 20 August 2010. Retrieved 18 January 2017.
  14. ↑ Juneja, Manjari (31 May 2010). "e-book readers: the Indian angle". Express Computer – Financial Express. Archived from the original on 29 June 2013. Retrieved 3 May 2013.
  15. ↑ Pandit, Virendra (24 February 2014). "Infibeam acquires digital marketer ODigMa for $5 mn". The Hindu Business Line. Retrieved 2 March 2014.
  16. ↑ http://www.newspatrolling.com/infibeam-company-profile/
  17. ↑ Shruti, Jain (14 February 2017). "Infibeam set to merge payment gateway firm CCAvenue with itself". Retrieved 13 June 2017.
  18. ↑ Dutta, Vishal (2018-05-08). "Infibeam acquires Snapdeal's wholly-owned subsidiary Unicommerce". The Economic Times. Retrieved 2018-06-01.
  19. ↑ "Infibeam Incorp Announcements/Notices: Latest Sotck/Share Market Notices/Announcements on Infibeam Incorp, Infibeam Incorp Stock Split,Bonus, Rights, Re-Structuring, Dividends, Board Meetings, Quarterly Results, Record Date, Ex-Date, Book Closure on BSE/NSE". www.moneycontrol.com. Retrieved 2018-06-01.
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  36. ↑ Suman Pokhiyal (7 April 2014). "Infibeam is conferred with 'The Game Changing Idea of The Year' Award by The Economic Times at ET RETAIL AWARD -2014". Retrieved 1 October 2014.
  37. ↑ "Second Coming". Business Today. Retrieved 21 March 2015.
  38. ↑ "Ecommerce Website Templates & Themes Online, Premium & Free Themes Store". www.themejungle.ooo. Retrieved 2018-06-09.
  39. ↑ Vikas SN. "Infibeam Launches Indent Platform For Digital Music Services; Partners Sony Music India". MediaNama. Retrieved 30 September 2014.
  40. ↑ Brindaalakshmi K. "Infibeam's Indent Powers Sony Music Jive Service For Xperia for all Phones". MediaNama. Retrieved 30 September 2014.
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  42. ↑ Amit Shanbaug (11 November 2013). "Advit Sahdev's ODigMa: A Rs 6 crore online marketing company built from Rs 2 lakh". The Economic Times. Retrieved 6 February 2015.
  43. ↑ "Infibeam to offer '.ooo' for '.com-savvy' netizens". The Hindu Business Line. 23 September 2014. Retrieved 29 September 2014.
  44. ↑ Mishra, Piyush (26 September 2014). "Ahmedabad firm introduces DOT TRIPPLE O power domain for internet". The Times of India. Retrieved 29 September 2014.
  45. ↑ "Infibeam introduces logistics platform for online merchants". Business Line. 30 January 2015. Retrieved 3 February 2015.
  46. ↑ Chitra Unnithan (31 January 2015). "Infibeam introduces logistic platform for merchants". The Times of India. Retrieved 3 February 2015.
  47. ↑ Vivek Pai. "Infibeam launches logistics services marketplace ShipDroid". Medianama.com. MediaNama. Retrieved 3 February 2015.
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  49. ↑ "Indian platform www.dhamaal.com launched for traders". The Economic Times. 1 August 2013. Retrieved 2 September 2013.
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  51. ↑ "Infibeam Pi: Is this India's killer IT product?". rediff.com. 30 March 2010. Retrieved 27 October 2015.
  52. ↑ Poonam Singhal. "Indian ebook reader : Pi – Kindle's rival". Moneymint.in. Archived from the original on 29 May 2013.
  53. ↑ Dhamini Ratnam (3 February 2010). "India serves Amazon, Apple some humble Pi". Hindustan Times. Archived from the original on 10 October 2014. Retrieved 3 May 2013.
  54. ↑ Puneet Mehrotra (23 October 2010). "Desi Ebook Readers in India". Hindustan Times. Archived from the original on 1 February 2013. Retrieved 3 May 2013.
  55. 1 2 Mahananda Bohidar (23 March 2011). "Reason enough to go digital? Infibeam Pi 2". The Hindu Business Line. Retrieved 4 May 2013.
  56. ↑ "Infibeam launches Infibeam Pi2 e-reader". Times of India. 1 March 2011. Retrieved 18 January 2017.
  57. ↑ "Infibeam Phi". Youtube.com. Retrieved 31 January 2016.
  58. ↑ Annual report 2016-17. Gandhinagar: Infybeam. 1 November 2017. |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  59. ↑ "Infibeam shares nosedive 70% ahead of AGM". Live Mint. 29 September 2018. Retrieved 29 September 2018.
  60. ↑ "FT 1000: High-Growth Companies Asia-Pacific". ig.ft.com. Retrieved 2018-06-14.
  61. ↑ "Indian Retail & eRetail Congress 2018". www.indianretailer.com. Retrieved 2018-06-18.
  62. ↑ "Indian Retail & eRetail Congress 2018". www.indianretailer.com. Retrieved 2018-06-18.
  63. ↑ "Indian Retail & eRetail Congress 2018". www.indianretailer.com. Retrieved 2018-06-18.
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