Infibeam files for IPO, first Indian etailer to do so

With increasing internet access worldwide, the digital marketplace is a booming sector with new brands being created and traded online almost every now and then. India is also not behind with its indigenous e-commerce firms going global thanks to the platform provided by the World Wide Web. But like any other company, for a commercial firm to expand; it requires considerable amount of capital. The capital markets or commonly known as share markets, are the most reliable and available source to acquire the required financial aid.

Infibeam to File IPO in Domestic Share Market

E-commerce company Infibeam Incorporation Ltd has also come on board to place their bid by filing a Draft Red Herring Prospectus (DRHP) to the Indian securities market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to enlist their ownership rights in the domestic stock exchanges as the first e-retail company to ever do it. According to the reports published in Economic Times and The Financial Express sources over the last couple of days, the company plans to raise an amount of $70.69 million or Rs. 450 crore. to set up various corporate infrastructural facilities including a cloud data centre, 75 logistics centres and several registered and corporate offices and for General Corporate Purposes like purchasing the copyrights of various important softwares etc. The company has also set its eye for raising up to 10 times the amount it’s herding for now in future to spread the company even further on the global scale.

Knowing Infibeam

Set up in 2007 by Mr. Vishal Mehta, former Amazon executive, the ahmedabad headquartered e-commerce conglomerate runs the middle-east online marketplace giant Infibeam, software specialization wings INCEPT, INDENT, ODIGMA, Clickmego and Picsquare and online retail website creator platform BuildaBazaar. Apart from the online travel and ticket booking platform INCEPT, customized online digital photoprinting site Picsquare and digital marketing service provider ODIGMA, the base e-retailing site Infibeam, through its marketstore platform, is promoting the middle-eastern retailing giants Jumbo and Axiom and is also making other lifestyle and other retail service accessible to the door steps. The utility and impact of the Infibeam’s digital media wing INDENT can easily be witnessed by buying of 26% of its stake by global giant like Sony Music in 2014. The BuildaBazaar provides the small to medium scale start up industries the platform to start their online store under their own website under a new generic top level domain name “.OOO or dot-triple-‘O’”. Buildabazaar has already enabled well over 30,000 SMEs and other start-up retailers to go online.

Initial public offering (IPO) and Other Commercial Players

It is the first issuing of the ownership shares of a company (generally privately owned) in the primary stock exchange market to make it available to the general public investors and to become publicly traded. It is the first step in raising money from the public to use it on the company’s commercial fronts. The enlisting of shares of the digital space companies is significantly less than their real world counterparts such as the giants like Tata group, Reliance group etc as well as many other smaller industries. Like the Chinese e-commerce powerhouse Alibaba, the Indian e-commerce firms like Justdial and InfoEdge are emerging as some of the big players of digital space who have capital market enlisted shares.

With Infibeam setting up the stepping stone, it might well open the flood gate for other numerous online retailing giants as well as many other potent start ups to access the route to domestic capital market and flourish with the capital inflow to become national and global giants in all respects in the days to come.