INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Away from the limelight of the press and the frenzy of fundraising, a tech startup in India has achieved a feat that few of its peers have
($19.3), compared to its issue price of Rs 973 ($14.2).IndiaMART is the first business-to-business e-commerce firm to go public in India
months-long drought that led to it.Accounting firm EY said it expects more companies from India to follow suit and file for IPO in the
(second half of the year)
Companies that had filed their offer documents with the Indian stock markets regulator during H2 2018 and Q1 2019 may finally come to market
journey.The startup was founded in 1996 and for the first 13 years, it focused on exports to customers abroad, but it has since modernized
interview.Until 2008, IndiaMART was fully bootstrapped and profitable with $10 million in revenue, Agarwal said
and CEO of IndiaMart.com, poses for a profile shot on July 29, 2015 in Noida, India.By this time, millions of people in India were on the
is when we decided to pursue a completely different path
businesses with about 60% market share, according to research firm KPMG
million buyers and 5.5 million suppliers from thousands of towns and cities of India.According to the most recent data published by the
Indian government, there are about 50 to 60 million small and medium-sized businesses in India, but only around 10 million of them have any
transition to the current day was a straightforward process for the company
2002, it launched a travel portal for businesses
A year later, it launched a business verification service
It also unveiled a payments platform called ABCPayments
interview.IndiaMART, which employs about 4,000 people, is operationally profitable as of the financial year that ended in March this year
It clocked some $82 million in revenue in the year
It has raised about $32 million to date from Intel Capital, Amadeus Capital Partners and Quona Capital
(Notably, Agarwal said that he rejected offers from VCs for a very long time.)The firm makes most of its revenue from subscriptions it sells
A subscription gives a seller a range of benefits including getting featured on storefronts.Where the industry standsThere are only a
handful of internet companies in India that have gone public in the last decade
Online travel service MakeMyTrip went public in 2010
Software firm Intellect Design Arena and e-commerce store Koovs listed in 2014, then travel portal Yatra and e-commerce firm Infibeam
followed two years later.India has consistently attracted billions of dollars in funding in recent years and produced many unicorns
Those include Flipkart, which was acquired by Walmart last year for $16 billion, Paytm, which has raised more than $2 billion to date,
struggled and been around for so long building a very difficult business and finally going public in the local exchange is a phenomenal
India, markets will prefer only the IPOs of companies that are profitable
And investors in India might not value those companies
This will also mean that the stock market here has matured and understands the tech stocks and how it is different from other consumer
stocks they usually handle
majority of leading startups are ready for the public market.The Indian government, for its part, this week announced a number of incentives
Sitharaman, who is the first woman to hold this position in India, said the government would also launch a TV program to help startups
connect with venture capitalists.The path ahead for IndiaMARTIndiaMART has managed to build a sticky business that compels more than 55% of
With some 3,500 of its 4,000 employees classified as sales executives, the company is aggressive in its pursuit of new customers
suite of offerings to its business customers in a bid to increase the value they get from its platform and thus increase their reliance on
its service.IndiaMART has built a customer relationship management (CRM) tool so that customers need not rely on spreadsheets or other
interest of Amazon and Walmart in the business-to-business space
recent years and are increasingly expanding their operations
Agarwal did not seem much worried, however, telling TechCrunch that he believes that his prime competition is more focused on B2C and
performance are not one and the same.Nobody knows at this point, and the added complexity at play is that the concept of a tech IPO is so
