Infibeam Incorporation Ltd, parent company of the country’s only listed e-commerce will acquire 100% stakes in the tech solutions company of Snapdeal, Unicommerce.
Infibeam released a statement stipulating that in reached an agreement with Snapdeal’s parent company, Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd to acquire Unicommerce for the sum of Rs 120 crore. Snapdeal reported a 75% jump in loss for the financial year ended March 2017 and are now selling Unicommerce for 55% less than they acquired it in 2015 for $40 million.
Founded by IIT Delhi alumni Ankit Pruthi, Karun Signla and Vibhu Garg in 2012, Unicommerce licensed a product called Uniware that is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) application for end-to-end management of order fulfillment. The application specializes in managing vendors, procurement, inventory and warehouse. Over 10,000 sellers including Myntra, Jabong, Lenskart and others, use Uniware.
In August last year, the founding team of Unicommerce left the company as the terms of the acquisition contract of Snapdeal stipulated. After the exit of the Unicommerce founding team, Snapdeal was ready to listen to acquisition offers for the company.
Infibeam Inc. is a fast growing e-commerce technology company that offers cloud based e-commerce platform service in B2C and B2B verticals. The company aims at empowering individuals and businesses with retail value chain by providing affordable technology to solve large-scale business problems. The company is recording a very successful period with YoY growth going in a vertical direction of 108% leading to a revenue of $33.4 Mn in Q3 FY18.
Snapdeal sold several of its acquired companies since its merge and acquisition deal with Flipkart fell through in a bid to cut costs and divesting assets. It notably sold its logistics arm Vulcan Express Pvt. Ltd to Future Group for $5.5 million in cash and digital payments unit FreeCharge to Axis Bank. All three companies were crucial assets for Snapdeal but the once-popular e-commerce platform is now struggling to generate profits and are therefore selling their subsidiaries for very low prices. For example, while Snapdeal acquired Freecharge for $ 400 Million, the company sold it to Axis Bank last year for a meager $ 60 Mn.