Infibeam Sees Revenue Contract By 24% For Q1 FY21

India’s Infibeam Avenues, with involvement across sectors such as digital payments, ecommerce and internet services, has released its financial report for the June quarter of the financial year 2020-21 (FY21). 

The report mentions that the company’s various businesses witnessed a consolidated decline of 24% in quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) revenue in the first quarter of FY21. The revenue stood at INR 103 Cr. Infibeam offers payment gateway and white label solution (CCAvenue), bill payments (BillAvenue), Hospitality Solution (ResAvenue), B2B payments and white label solution (B2Biz), payment processing for financial institutions (CCAvenue PG Services-CPGS), digital lending and card issuance (CCAvenue Finance) and enterprise platform for ecommerce. 

The report adds that other key financial metrics such as Profit After Tax (PAT) and Total Payments Volume (TPV) also witnessed a fall in the June quarter. While PAT stood at INR 12 Cr (39 QoQ decline), TPV stood at INR 14,200 Cr (16% QoQ decline). 

Another segment in the report mentions that if not for the financial disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the company’s revenue would have been INR 160 Cr, a 16% QoQ on growth, adding that other financial metrics such as PAT and TPV, among others, would have witnessed similar growth.

Ahmedabad-headquartered Infibeam was founded in 2007 by Sachin Dalal, Vishal Mehta and Neeru Sharma. It provides end-to-end ecommerce payments solutions to small and large merchants, enterprises and governments.

The company is also the first ecommerce company in the country to be listed with SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India) after it received an approval to raise $69 Mn (INR 450 Cr) through an initial public offering (IPO).

The Infibeam report adds that the company’s payments businesses witnessed a V-shaped recovery, and the TPV by June end had crossed the March 2020 levels, despite aviation and hospitality sectors largely affected due to Covid-19 induced country-wide lockdown. A similar trend was witnessed by the company’s bill payments platform BillAvenue, with the volume and value of bill payments having increased 2x and 3x respectively for the quarter ending June 2020, when compared to Q1 of FY20. 

“Covid-19 has led to a sharp rise in digital adoption for utility payments with month-on-month (MoM) rise in volumes,” says the report. 

Digital Payments Growth In India

The Infibeam findings are in line with the larger trend relating to the growth of digital payments amid the Covid-19 pandemic in India. 

The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has continued its fast-paced growth once again with 1.61 Bn transactions in August 2020. This amounts to transactions worth nearly INR 2.98 Lakh Cr.

Digital payments body National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) had previously announced that UPI had crossed 1.3 Bn transactions worth INR 2.16 Lakh Cr in January 2020. Later, it jumped to 1.32 Bn transactions worth INR 2.22 Lakh Cr in February. There was a minor slump in UPI transactions in March and April, which pulled transactions below the billion mark.

Yet UPI has managed to regain its growth pace and will manage to cross nearly 2 Bn transactions by the end of the year. Last month, it completed 1.49 Bn transactions worth INR 2.90 Lakh Cr.

A report by management consulting firm RedSeer has also suggested that the Covid-19 pandemic will lead to wide-scale adoption of digital payments in India. 

Infibeam claims to be processing transactions for its more than 1 Mn clients across digital payments and enterprise software platforms. The company’s vast clientele includes merchants, enterprises, corporations and governments in both domestic (India) as well as international markets. Infibeam Avenues’ international operations are based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with recent launches in Saudi Arabia and the US.

The company’s recent report mentions that expanding reach to merchants in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities of India, as well as gaining strategic inroads in international geographies, were some of the operational highlights in Q1 of FY21.