More personalised, improved and better services for Infibeam users
More personalised, improved and better services for Infibeam users

Raising funds through investors has been the common trade trick of the season. However, there is an exception. The recent Infibeam IPO is an eye opener that has stunned us all. Moreover, the latest updates of the IPO being oversubscribed also have made the IPO more interesting. To know the story in detail, Retailer Magazine catches up with the Founder & Managing Director, Vishal Mehta to unfold the following.

Many congratulations for the IPO. The first question that comes to mind is why have you not taken the most usual way of fund raising through investors than an IPO?
Primarily we evaluated all the prevailing opportunities and it was our board decision to raise funds through Initial Public Offerings.

How do you intend to use the IPO money?
We have manifold plans for the same. For example, we intend to set cloud data centre and purchase a property for shifting the registered and corporate offices of our company. We believe that a Tier III data centre will enable increased efficiency and adaptability in our search processes, ensure faster and more user-friendly user interfaces and deliver effective, customised, personalised and more relevant search results for our customers. We believe that setting up a cloud data centre would provide us certain strategic advantages including such as underlying control over hardware and increased availability and mitigation of geo-specific risk. We also believe that establishing our own technologically advanced data centres will enable us to exercise increased control over proprietary technology and customer information, better management of customer and market analytics, ensuring superior confidentiality and security protection and also providing faster recovery support infrastructure.

Moreover, we plan to strengthen logistics and expand to 75 logistics centres. Presently we have 12 logistics centres strategically located in 11 cities across India including Delhi, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Chennai, Gurgaon, Jaipur, Pune and Lucknow. As a part of our strategy of increasing average revenue per vendor by introducing additional VAS offerings through our service infrastructure, we intend to expand our warehousing and logistics infrastructure, network and service offerings in various region of India, to provide additional logistics and operational support and solutions to our expansive vendor network across India. Next, we propose to purchase certain software from third parties for setting up a software platform for providing mobile ad framework which includes customer targeting based on mobile criteria such as device, operating system, carrier or features of the device (the “Software Platform”). With the development and availability of Software Platform, we believe that more merchants would utilise the platform and over time shift more of their existing platform on to buildabazaar eCommerce platform.

Also, we are analysing to deploy the balance towards general corporate purposes, subject to such utilisation not exceeding 25 per cent of the Issue Proceeds, in compliance with the SEBI Regulations, primarily for brand building through advertising and other brand-building activities in accordance with the media plan from the advertising agency and towards strategic initiatives, including, international expansion. Infibeam shall deploy at least INR 400.00 million out of the Net proceeds allocated under general corporate purposes towards brand building activities.

Are all your merchants going to subscribe your IPO?
The issue is open for all.

Do you have plans to shift your base out of Ahmadabad?
We intend to consolidate our operations in Ahmedabad and accordingly, we propose to purchase property for shifting of the registered and the corporate office at the proposed Tier III data centre at Gandhinagar GIFT City. We believe that the consolidation of our operations in Ahmedabad will provide us with the necessary operational efficiency and reputational and other benefits.

Do you have any plans of opening your dark store or any offline store?
Our BuildaBazaar Marketplace offers customisable eCommerce storefront to merchants with many having offline store. Our Infibeam.com e-retail operations provide us the access to customers, market analytics and other synergistic operating efficiencies and offerings and an additional sales channel to BuildaBazaar Marketplace merchants.

Five tips from you to the new entrant eCommerce players.
•Have intensity and don't be impatience

• Keep track of profitability and innovate

• Build strong foundation by selecting right people to form core team

• Be customer centric, both external and internal

• Adopt right culture to beat strategy.

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