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Infibeam Avenues Limited
Company typePublic
NSE: INFIBEAM
BSE: 539807
IndustryInternet
Founded2007 (2007)
FounderVishal Mehta
HeadquartersAhmedabad, India
Area served
India, Middle East
ServicesOnline payments, Internet services (data centres, domains), e-commerce software
Revenue₹300 crores/₹3 billion[1]
Number of employees
1300 (in 2015)
Websiteia.ooo

Infibeam Avenues Limited is an Indian internet conglomerate involved in digital payments, e-commerce software and internet services. The company is headquartered in Ahmedabad, India. Its consumer ecommerce website Infibeam.com was acquired by Suvidhaa Infoserve in August 2019 and now operates as Suvideals.ooo.[2][3]

Infibeam 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.[4][5] 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.[6][7][8]

History

Infibeam was founded in 2007 by Vishal Mehta, a Cornell and MIT Sloan alumnus.[9] After working for Dell and Amazon.com in the United States for five years, Mehta returned to India in 2007 and started Infibeam along with a group of Amazon employees.[10][11] He funded the company by selling his personal assets rather than opting for external equity funding.[12] The company was started with an initial capital of ₹100-150 million.[13] Infibeam.com started as an automobile portal in 2007, but later turned into an online retailer.[14] In 2010, Infibeam launched 'Pi', India's first e-book reader.[15][16]

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.[17] 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.

In 2017, Infibeam merged with CCAVenue, India's largest payment gateway by transactions, in a deal that valued the payment gateway at $289 million.[18]

In May 2018 Infibeam Inc. acquired 100% shareholding of Vavian International Ltd.[19] The deal was valued $1.17 million,[20] this made Vavian International a direct subsidiary of Infibeam Global EMEA FZ-LLC, a subsidiary of Infibeam Incorporation Ltd.[21]

Financials and fall in share price

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.[22] 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.[23]

Businesses

Infibeam's businesses include e-commerce platform software service through 'buildabazaar.com', digital Payments, domain names and other internet services. The turnover of the company was reported to be ₹10 billion as of November 2013.[1][24]

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.[25] The website has a selection of 12 million products across books, electronics, lifestyle, gifts and media.[11] In 2011, the company established Infibeam Logistics, its own logistics arm in major Indian cities.[26] In September 2010, infibeam was among Economic Times's Top 5 Digital Brands in the e-commerce category.[27] Infibeam's acquisition of customer base at very low cost has been recorded as a B-school case study by Ivey Publishing.[28] Infibeam is the only authorised online seller of iPhones in India.[29][30] 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.[31]

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[32] and Crossword Bookstores[33] and NDTV Shopping[34][35] In 2011, the e-commerce platform was opened to everyone through Buildabazaar, which allows users to create their own web store.[36] Buildabazaar was awarded ‘The Game Changing Idea of The Year’ Award by The Economic Times at ET RETAIL AWARD 2014.[37] The platform was launched in the Middle East region in 2014. It has 30,000 stores as of March 2015.[38] The company announced in 2018, that its ecommerce business had achieved break even point and its consolidated net profit grew by 53%[39]

ThemeJungle

The theme store- ThemeJungle[40] is subsidiary of BuildaBazaar. It is a conglomerate of many themes brought under one roof by Infibeam. The website launched in January 2018 to support BuildaBazaar stores. It is a marketplace of various themes designed by professional designers. Until May 2018, ThemeJungle has uploaded over one hundred 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.[41] In 2013, the company built Sony Music's Jive HD streaming and downloading app embedded in Sony's Xperia smartphones.[42]

Digital marketing services

The company offers Digital Marketing Services through its subsidiary ODIGMA, which it acquired in 2014.[43] ODIGMA employs 70 people and serves digital marketing campaigns for around 400 brands.[44]

Generic top level domain name registry

Main article: .ooo

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.[45][46]

Logistics aggregation platform

ShipDroid, a logistics aggregation platform 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 lets merchants choose modes of delivery such as surface, rail, or air mode, and can opt for delivery commitment SLAs such as express or regular.[47][48][49]

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.[19]

Marketplace

In August 2013, Infibeam launched the e-commerce marketplace Dhamaal.com in association with CCAvenue. Dhamaal has a selection of 1fifteen million products. The website is built on Buildabazaar platform, and is extended as a co-branded marketplace with fifty Indian banks.[50]

E-book reader

Infibeam Pi

In February 2010, Infibeam launched Pi, an e-book reader that uses E-Ink electronic paper technology.[10] Pi has a six-inch screen with eight level grayscale non-backlit display.[51][52] The device has the capability to play music files, read Word documents and also supports 13 Indian languages.[10][53] It has an internal memory of 512 MB, that can store 300 books and supports external memory up to 4 GB.[54] The device, which is less than 10 millimetres (0.39 inches), weighs 180 grams (6.3 ounces).[55]

Pi2

In 2011, Infibeam launched the second version of its e-book reader, Pi2.[56] 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. They claim the battery power lasts up to 8,000 page reads.[56] The company has over 500 thousand e-books on its web store which readers can access from the reader to purchase e-books.[57] Infibeam followed the Pi2 with an Android tablet called Phi.[58]

Recognition

In February 2018, Infibeam was ranked 418th in The Financial Times and Statista's FT1000 High Growth Companies Asia - Pacific 2018.[59]

Infibeam was conferred with Consumer Durable & E-Retail of the Year Award at E-Retail Award 2018[60] by Franchise India held on 16–17 April 2018 in JW Marriott Hotel, New Delhi.[61] At the same award function, Infibeam's subsidiary CC Avenue was conferred with "Best Innovation in E-Commerce Payment".[62]

References

  1. ^ a b Umarji, Vinay (1 November 2013). "Infibeam to foray into UAE market". Business Standard. Retrieved 6 November 2013.
  2. ^ Dutta, Vishal (19 August 2019). "Fintech firm Suvidhaa plans e-commerce foray". The Economic Times.
  3. ^ "Migration Message" (PDF). Suvideals.ooo.
  4. ^ "Ahmedabad-based e-tailer Infibeam to increase headcount by 2015". The Times Of India. 9 May 2013.
  5. ^ Rai, Anand. "How E-com Firm Infibeam Is Managing Without External Funding". techcircle.in. Retrieved 25 April 2012.
  6. ^ REUTERS (July 2015). "Infibeam files for IPO in first ecommerce listing". Reuters. {{cite news}}: |last1= has generic name (help)
  7. ^ "Infibeam Files for IPO in Indias First E-Commerce Listing – NDTVProfit.com". Profit.ndtv.com. 1 July 2015. Retrieved 31 January 2016.
  8. ^ "IndiGo and Infibeam file for Rs 3,000 crore IPOs – Times of India". Timesofindia.indiatimes.com. 1 July 2015. Retrieved 31 January 2016.
  9. ^ "Vishal Mehta, Infibeam Avenues Ltd: Profile and Biography". Bloomberg.com. Retrieved 16 July 2019.
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  12. ^ S. Prem Kumar. "Infibeam's double-edged strategy". The Smart CEO. Retrieved 29 April 2013.
  13. ^ Suresh P. Iyengar (6 October 2013). "No competitors here, all are partners". The Hindu Business Line. Retrieved 8 December 2014.
  14. ^ Pahwa, Nikhil. "Confirmed: Infibeam Acquires Picsquare.com". MediaNama. Retrieved 29 April 2013.
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  17. ^ Pandit, Virendra (24 February 2014). "Infibeam acquires digital marketer ODigMa for $5 mn". The Hindu Business Line. Retrieved 2 March 2014.
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  41. ^ Vikas SN. "Infibeam Launches Indent Platform For Digital Music Services; Partners Sony Music India". MediaNama. Retrieved 30 September 2014.
  42. ^ Brindaalakshmi K. "Infibeam's Indent Powers Sony Music Jive Service For Xperia for all Phones". MediaNama. Retrieved 30 September 2014.
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  45. ^ "Infibeam to offer '.ooo' for '.com-savvy' netizens". The Hindu Business Line. 23 September 2014. Retrieved 29 September 2014.
  46. ^ Mishra, Piyush (26 September 2014). "Ahmedabad firm introduces DOT TRIPPLE O power domain for internet". The Times of India. Retrieved 29 September 2014.
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  58. ^ "Infibeam Phi". Youtube.com. Retrieved 31 January 2016.
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