Infibeam Looks To Expand Internationally On The Heels Of Strong Q1 Growth

Ahmedabad-based digital payments and Platform as a Service Provider (PaaS) Infibeam Avenues has reported 129% YoY growth in consolidated profit after tax to INR 288 Mn driven by strong transaction growth in digital payments.

Earlier noted as an ecommerce marketplace, Infibeam divested its ecommerce marketplace infibeam.com to Suvidha Infoserv last year and moved to its core business of digital payments and ecommerce platform for government and enterprise.

For the Q1 ended June 30, 2019, it claimed to have processes 38.6 Mn successful payment transactions, an increase of 44 % YoY. The value of successful payments processed was INR 148.7 Bn, which is an increase of 40% YoY.

This is comparatively the good sign. The company recorded a net loss of $1.97 Mn (INR 13.88 Cr) for Q1 FY2019 ended on June 30, 2018.  This was more than 5x of $314K (INR 2.2 Cr) loss in Q4 FY2018.  The loss can be attributed to increased company expenses on account of the aggressive growth strategy followed after raking in the government e-marketplace (GeM) contract in July 2017. However, it seems the company is reaping in the investments now.

For the uninitiated, Infibeam Avenues Limited (IAL) operates an online payment system with technology platform solutions across industry verticals. This includes

• CCAvenue: Payment gateway platform
• Government eMarketplace and BuildBazaar: Technology platforms
• Bill Avenue: Interoperable bill payment solution built on the Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS) infrastructure
• ResAvenue: A central hub for the distribution of hotel inventory
• Data centre infrastructure: Designed to have an uptime of 99.98% the company forayed into the segment of infrastructure or data-centre-as-a-service during the fiscal year 2019

Here’s the performance of these verticals in Q1 FY20 for Infibeam Avenues:

Other Key Points From Q1 FY2020 Financials 

• Revenue INR 1,855 Mn, a decrease of 27% YoY
• EBITDA INR 553 Mn, an increase of 80% YoY
• EBITDA margin improved to 30% compared to 12% YoY
• Profit after tax INR 288 Mn, an increase of 129% YoY
• Number of merchants on web services crossed 1 mn

Infibeam FY20 Performance: What Led The Growth?

In the past three years, the company has doubled its digital payment processing business driven by additional processing from existing merchants, adding new merchants, growing payments across new categories such as utility payments as well as international expansion of digital payments and enterprise technology platforms.

Recently,  its Dubai-based wholly-owned subsidiary Infibeam Global EMEA signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Middle East investment firm UniPropitia to expand its web service platform in the Arab League countries. As part of the deal, UniPropitia will acquire a 51% stake in the Dubai subsidiary for a total consideration not exceeding $25 Mn.

Infibeam managing director Vishal Mehta said the strong Q1 performance bodes well for the rest of the year. ”We expect to grow our business by expanding digital payments and checkout platform in domestic and international markets,” he added.

The company is now looking to grow its merchant base and enhance its reach in the Indian market as well as increase its digital payments market share in India and UAE. There are plans to expand and launch digital payments with checkout solutions in more countries including in  Saudi Arabia.

On the technology front, it aims to grow the enterprise technology platform with integrated digital payments, grow its data centre infrastructure business with a focus on the BFSI sector as well as digital lending for merchants.