Infibeam Acquires eSolutions Company “Unicommerce” from Snapdeal

Unicommerce to Strengthen Infibeam’s Web Services Capabilities and Propel Merchant and Revenue Growth

Infibeam Incorporation Limited (BSE 539807/NSE INFIBEAM), India’s leading
e-commerce integrated platform solution provider and payments conglomerate has entered into an agreement with Jasper Infotech, which owns Snapdeal, to acquire 100% stake in Unicommerce Esolutions Pvt. Ltd. Under the agreement Infibeam will issue Optionally Convertible Debentures on preferential basis to Jasper Infotech valued upto INR 1200 million, subject to shareholders’ approval. The board has also proposed and approved the change of name of the company from Infibeam Incorporation Limited to Infibeam Avenues Limited subject to shareholders’ and other statutory approvals.

Unicommerce is a fully owned subsidiary company of Jasper Infotech and is a market leader in e- commerce enablement software for warehouse management and omni-channel services. It is one of the few profitable companies in India in the SaaS market providing comprehensive end-to-end e-commerce solutions, including warehouse management, multi-channel order fulfillment, e-commerce order processing, catalogue management, inventory management, and omni-channel management for both brands and online sellers. It serves the needs of manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, retail chains, and individual store owners. With over 10,000+ sellers and a large number of leading brands and e- commerce players as its clients, Unicommerce enables businesses to seamlessly integrate with leading marketplaces, logistics providers and ERP systems. With the acquisition of Unicommerce eSolutions, Infibeam will further expand and strengthen its e-commerce web service offerings and capabilities.

Infibeam is among one of India’s profitable e-commerce company which offers unique and exhaustive Web Services solution comprising, e-commerce platform (BuildaBazaar), digital payments platform (CCAvenue), and logistics platform (Shipdroid) to the merchants in India and abroad along with running its own e-marketplace, Infibeam.com.

Infibeam acquired CCAvenue, one of the largest payment solution platforms in India. CCAvenue has grown exponentially recording over 50% annual growth in the last three years. It processed transactions worth INR 54.14 billion in Q3 FY18, INR 144.99 billion in the 9 months ending December 2017 (vs. FY17 annualized at INR 122 billion). Recently, the company has also won the bid along with its consortium partner to manage the country’s largest e-commerce portal, Government e-Marketplace (GeM) and has been awarded the contract from National Skill Development Corporation to develop e-Marketplace for skilling resources.

Vishal Mehta, Managing Director, Infibeam Incorporation Limited said, “Unicommerce is a valuable addition to the Infibeam family. Through Unicommerce, we plan to boost our e-commerce enablement capabilities and expand the product offerings for existing clients. Unicommerce fits perfectly with Infibeam’s vision of creating India’s largest e-commerce enablement and payments ecosystem for businesses, including web-front, web domain, logistics and payment solutions. This acquisition would help us further create a comprehensive e-commerce solution by offering extended capabilities to transact with other leading online marketplaces. It will also be pivotal for the growth of our fast growing GeM (Government e-Marketplace) business. We are deeply committed to the growth of Unicommerce, fully support the current management team and plan to further invest in the business.”

Jason Kothari, Chief Strategy & Investment Officer, Snapdeal, said, “Selling Unicommerce to Infibeam is a continuation of the Snapdeal 2.0 plan to divest and focus on our core consumer e-commerce business. We believe Infibeam is the best partner for Unicommerce due to its multiple business synergies. As one example, Unicommerce is set to gain from Infibeam’s growing large merchant base enabled by Infibeam Web Services and creating more comprehensive e-commerce solutions for its clients. Moreover, I am confident Unicommerce will flourish under the guidance of Vishal, who has experience in scaling B2B technology businesses very successfully. We wish Unicommerce and Infibeam the best in their future together.”

Kapil Makhija, Chief Executive Officer, Unicommerce eSolutions said, “This new home is a great opportunity for Unicommerce to benefit from the vast experience and B2B e-commerce expertise of Infibeam. We believe this acquisition will enable us to further innovate on various client solutions and grow the business both in India and internationally rapidly. We are very excited to join and work closely with Infibeam’s leadership team.”

E-Commerce to Adopt '4G Network' Mantra!

With the blow of a conch shell, the battle has already begun! When Airtel girl Sasha Chhetri mocked her own self and became the most hated personality on the Indian internet to promote the Airtel 4G challenge, Vodafone smelled the opportunity and brought back its Pug Cheeka out of the oblivion to hold the brand's banner of speedy and reliable 4G connection. Recently, Idea Cellular too joined the race through its #BiggestSmallChange communication campaign.

Stage Set for E-commerce to M-commerce:

Sensing this lucrative opportunity, e-commerce market is all set to taste the fruits of lightening speed 4G connection. With 4G- the fourth generation telecom technology that offers quick data downloads will enable them to give richer shopping experience to its customers. Through enticing visual search features and streaming video content, online shopping will undergo a dramatic transformation to make easy the desired product search and viewing experience for customers.

E-commerce on Mobile Grows Double

The year 2014 has seen a drastic rise in number of online consumers buying it from mobile phones while the share of number of transactions from Personal Computers is reducing. The number of people buying from Infibeam from their mobile phones has seen over 90% growth. It has almost doubled.

Of the total share of number of transactions in 2013, the sale request from mobile phone had contributed about 9% which increased to over 18% by the end of 2014. People buying online on tablets has marginally increased from 2.70% in 2013 to over 3% in 2014.

But, the share of sale through PCs or desktop has decreased. Over 88% Infibeam consumers were buying from PCs until end of 2013. By the end of 2014, it reduced to about 78%. Over 10% consumers including new and existing started buying it from mobile phones.

Even the share of number of visitors on Infibeam using mobile phone has increased sharply. It was less than 30% until December 2013 and increased to about 36% within a year. There is drop of about 7% in consumer visiting portal through their desktops or PCs in one year. The numbers of online consumers using tablet for shopping has marginally increased.

Shopping on Mobile Phones

Sharp and tremendous growth in online buyers shifting from desktop to mobile was obvious. Across India, the total number internet subscribers on mobile phone has increased by 65%. Till the end of December 2013, there were total 4.02 crore broadband subscribers on mobile phone. That increased to 6.65 crore till the end of November 2014.

As per TRAI's latest report, the total number of broadband (downloading speed with 512 kbps or more) users in India increased by 49% in 2014. There were total 5.52 crore registered broadband users in India till the end of 2013 which increased to 8.22 crore by the end of November 2014, reveals TRAI report.

The era has come when there is a generation that is accessing Internet first on mobile phones or tablets instead of PCs or net-books. The next generation is keen on e-commerce and that too buying it from their mobile phones, which are making it more convenient, easier and faster.

Today, the country with over 120 crore population, has over 93.70 crore mobile connections. Of the total number of subscribers in India, mere 7% of them are accessing internet on mobile phone. It is estimated that in coming years, the number of internet subscribers on mobile phone will see multi-fold growth.

Hence, there is a huge potential of e-commerce on mobile as the number of online buyers will continue to rise in the country.

Powering Hidesign

Yesterday, we discussed how we are powering ecommerce stores for big brands in India. Today, we'd like to highlight the most recent brand that we have powered - Hidesign's official website www.hidesign.com . As you may already know, Hidesign is the iconic leather accessories brand from India.

Here is a screenshot of the portal:

And here is a screenshot of one of the product showcases:





Speaking on the alliance, Mr. Vikas Kapur, International Director, Hidesign, who oversees Hidesign's website and e-marketing initiatives said "Hidesign's online website caters to a clientele that is diverse and distributed across the globe. We are delighted to launch a brand new website in association with our eCommerce partner Infibeam.com. Some of the highlights of the new website include an information rich shopping experience, search engine friendliness, and most important of all easy navigation & checkout." He added, "The fresh look & feel is true to our identity as a global fashion brand. The new website also includes a unique section presenting the history and timeline of Hidesign through a nice visual sketch."

For more details, please see our press release.

Powering ecommerce stores for Brands

Continuing Vishal's (Founder and CEO) memoirs of the growth of Infibeam:

“In 2009, we were a ninety people strong. The recession had started to show signs globally but we were forward investing in growth. We started reviewing our cost structure and renegotiated some of our leases but continued hiring the best engineers which was a bold bet but well worth taking.

“We always thought the biggest advantage we had was being one of the first mover with great technology for online retail in India. It was clear that online selling will still be a small portion of overall retail in India for the next few years, so we would make ourselves more successful by offering our technology to others. And the end-customer wins by having a great experience across online stores by different brands.

“We offered our technology services to retail and media partners like Futurebazaar.com, In.com Shopping and TTK Prestige. We have a strong pipeline of brands, media companies and retailers who will be using our technology services in the near future. Retailers who use Infibeam's technology like the fact that Infibeam uses the same technology for its own online store, and all partners operate on the same platform.

“While we have not publicized our services, our retail business has multiplied year over year. We always believed that our investment should continue into making a great customer experience, and less will go into shouting about our service. In any case, word of mouth is becoming more powerful. If you offer a great selection and customer service, people find out, period.

“We believe in listening to our customers. And we believe that by immersing ourselves in the data, we can find the answers.”


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Expansion into a full ecommerce store

Continuing Vishal's memoirs:

“As we have been discussing, we started out as a lead generator for selling cars and bikes. Customers started using our service and we started car rentals as well. Then customers started asking us for car accessories! This led us to look at expanding our store to other product domains.

“To understand that expansion, let's take a step back and understand how ecommerce is different from normal retail shops.

“The physical shops that you visit actually store merchandise (whether it is computers, CDs or books) that you can buy instantly from them at each location. The demand is local as well. Compare that to an ecommerce store – where we have a huge list of products that you can buy – BUT we do not have physical inventory repeated each location (in theory, we can satisfy country wide demand from one location and not have to replicate inventory at each location).

“It is very hard to forecast across lakhs of products when and how much inventory to order. In addition, order allocation across multiple locations is another big challenge. Initially, we started working with suppliers to reactively order the item after customer order is placed to reduce inventory risk. Across time, we had enough buying history to predictively order several products and we continue to fulfill merchandise across our many locations.

“These are some of the challenges of running an ecommerce store, and you can now imagine how many complicated it can get, and why technology is important to remain on top of things.”

This is the behind-the-scenes picture, let's see how Infibeam started building out that picture.

First we needed the list of 'things' that we can sell, the “catalog”. The bigger the list, the bigger the “selection” for the customer.

So, in early 2008, we acquired a small outfit in Delhi that created digital catalog for retailers. Subsequently, we expanded fulfilment operations in North India.

We soon added more categories such as mobile store, health equipment, and cameras.

In May 2008, we launched our books store with more than 3 million books in our catalog. We continued adding selection across retail categories like mobile phones, apparel, home appliances and many more. By the end of 2008, we were selling products across all retail categories and business was growing. We had the entire roster of products that we could possibly sell.

Going back to our history of how we started selling cars and then customers started asking for car accessories, we were mentally in the space around products, and we came across the customized products space. For example, people want to buy mugs or keychains, wouldn't it be more appealing if it can be customized? That is when we decided this is an exciting market and we should be part it. We then acquired an ecommerce company in gifting and customized goods – PicSquare.com in Bangalore. It was started by two IITians - Manish Agarwal and Kartik Jain, a fantastic team. Soon, we expanded our presence in Bangalore and started fulfilment operations in South India.”

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The Official IPL store is powered by InfiBeam!

We are proud to inform all cricket fans that the Official IPL store is now powered by InfiBeam!

http://www.infibeam.com/IPL/

 

Visit http://www.infibeam.com/IPL/ to get T-shirts, caps, bats, mugs, etc. of your favorite teams - Chennai Super Kings, Deccan Chargers, Delhi Daredevils, Kings XI Punjab, Kolkata Knight Riders, Mumbai Indians, Rajasthan Royals, and Royal Challengers Bangalore!

Struggle

Continuing from Building a Company, Vishal says:

"There are so many things that can go wrong in a startup. We had no experience of running a business beyond being employees. One of our partners quit due to personal reasons and the remaining team had to regroup. It was disheartening but we were patient and worked on rebuilding momentum. But, then, our office neighbour was drilling a common wall and hit a water pipe which flooded our office. Most of the equipment including our servers were soaked in water. We rescued much of the office; and our website still runs on the salvaged servers! :).  Similarly, to create digital product catalogs, we made significant investment in getting expensive automated cameras and related gear just to realize that we did not need to spend so much on the hardware in the first place and a simple camera would work just fine with software processing.  Such is the startup life.

"We learned that things will not go smoothly and that you have to be willing to roll up your sleeves and get the job done. You can't have a specialist to do everything that you don't know how to do yourself. If you go in with that attitude, then you will get paralyzed because you will run into things that you don't know how to approach. More importantly, you will make mistakes, and you have to learn and try not making the same mistake again.

"We worked day and night to create the software infrastructure. We wanted to create an experience which would exceed customer expectations. Launching with an automobile store was one way to fund our growth as there was monetization associated with generating leads, while we continued building our retail software infrastructure. We launched the automobile store in October of 2007. Literally, in the first few days, we had interest from customers across India and we were totally unprepared to handle volumes. We were shocked to see that customers showed interest in purchasing new cars and bikes online in India. While there was offline customer follow-up required in closing a transaction, we had tied up with dealers and, in some cases, manufacturers across all major cities. To take a step towards closing the transaction online, we launched a gift voucher program for major car and bike brands that could be redeemed across any dealer location across India. 

"One of the hardest things about the Internet is that you don't see your customers. When you don't have a store to go to, you're trying to find ways to understand what they're experiencing. So we made everyone on the floor take customer calls. The day job for everyone was to do customer service and the night was spent fixing software to make customer experience better. I think attending customer calls during our early days was a blessing and our company culture to care and obsess on customer requirements grew from there. We started fixing hundreds of small but annoying things that made the customer experience better. We still continue the tradition of answering customer calls.

"While we worked very hard in early days, the income from leads and advertisement was not significant. The first problem was that customers who showed interest in purchasing were genuine but closing a transaction was not immediate (at a physical dealer location). The other problem was that customers who registered interest in vehicles almost never returned - people do not wake up and think of buying a vehicle everyday if you have recently purchased. That's when we started thinking of services tied to products and added a car rental section which started generating leads and additional revenue. We also started understanding buying patterns, analyzing information, and formed business decisions based upon this information. So that is where data warehousing and data mining and that sort of thing became very important to us, to help us build a strategy for our business. That is how we realized we needed to quickly build more online retail stores and develop a superb supply chain, because customers started asking us about music players for cars, navigation systems, bike helmets etc.

"There are a thousand little things that impact the customer, and we wanted to be at least 10 percent better than anybody else. I think that's exactly what we continue to do: stay focused on all the tiny little details that matter to customers."

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