Sumit Gandhi and Manish Gandhi, promoters of Asian Business Exhibitions and Conferences (ABEC), have acquired online art marketplace PosterGully for an undisclosed amount.
Founded in 2013 by Bharat Sethi, PosterGully is a curated marketplace that enables artists, designers, etc. to seamlessly contribute and merchandise their designs. It sells a variety of products, such as phone cases, art prints, home décor, clothing etc. globally. It claims to have over 5000 artists selling on the platform with over 1.5 Mn unique visitors in 2016.
As a platform, PosterGully will continue to operate under new leadership. Bharat Sethi, founder & CEO of PosterGully, will move out of day-to-day operations but continue to advise and serve the board. He will take charge as CEO of iDecorama, a technology-enabled online platform offering interior designing, and backed by the Gandhi brothers.
Established in 1993 as Asian Business Exhibitions & Conferences Ltd., ABEC has 10% share of the Indian exhibition market. With corporate offices in Mumbai, Delhi, and Bengaluru and support staff in several other cities, it churns out trade shows pan India.
Announcing the acquisition, Manish Gandhi said, “The team at PosterGully has displayed true signs of grit over the last few years building a solid, thriving community-led ecommerce marketplace that has performed admirably on all accounts: business growth, cost metrics, customer experience, and quality of execution. With this acquisition, we are committed to a digital-first approach across all our businesses”
PosterGully has also been a part of the GSF startup accelerator, launched by former Reliance Entertainment president Rajesh Sawhney.
In June 2015, PosterGully raised $160K amount of angel funding by a group of angel investors through LetsVenture. The round was led by former Consultant at Egon Zehnder, Natarajan Iyer. The other participants in this round included Rajesh Sawhney, Nish Bhutani, Vivek Mulchandani, Vikram Saxena, Mineral Enterprises Limited, Bhavika Enclave and Anuj Chowdhary.
Other startups in this segment include Cupick.com, Alma Mater and Bewakoof.com, etc.
