Decoding The Three P’s Of The Unicommerce Model: Patience, Product And Profit 

The rise of ecommerce, quick commerce and direct-to-consumer (D2C) models has created a vibrant ecosystem of technology services that keeps online retail running. Shopify and Wix have simplified the creation of digital storefronts. AutoStore has revolutionised warehouse automation and inventory management. Cloudflare and others help protect online businesses from cyberthreats. As digital commerce evolves, these ecommerce enablers continue to innovate and expand their capabilities — driving the next wave of online retail globally.

Gurugram-based Unicommerce has grown steadily against this backdrop. When it went public in August 2024, 12 years after its launch, it stood out as a rare outlier. It made a stellar debut, listing at a premium of 117.6% on the NSE (at INR 235 against an issue price of INR 108/share) and 113% (INR 230) on the BSE. It also emerged as India’s first listed and consistently profitable ecommerce SaaS player, well ahead of its peers such as Increff, Vinculum, Browntape, and EasyEcom, which are unlisted and loss-making.

While most of these companies are yet to release their FY25 numbers, Unicommerce has already wrapped up its first year as a listed company on a firm footing. On a standalone basis, its revenue from operations rose 9.74% YoY to INR 113.7 Cr, while profit after tax grew 65.64% to INR 21.6 Cr, demonstrating strong operating leverage and  validating the business model’s margin-accretive economics at higher volumes.

For the financial year ended March 31, 2025, consolidated revenue grew 30.1% YoY to INR 134.8 Cr while Profit After Tax rose 34.3% to INR 17.6 Cr.

To be noted, for FY25, the company’s consolidated financial statements included Shipway Technology, an ecommerce shipping automaton firm acquired in two tranches during December 2024 and March 2025. As a result, consolidated FY25 numbers include Shipway from mid-December onwards and are not directly comparable to previous standalone periods. Hence year-on-year performance has been evaluated on a standalone basis for YoY consistency.

Overall, Unicommerce is operating on a whopping 80% gross margin, with the remaining 20% allocated across its key cost centres, including personnel, corporate overheads and technology infrastructure. That efficiency, scaling revenue faster than costs, reflects not just financial discipline but the underlying economics of SaaS, where revenue growth outpaces cost expansion as scale builds.

With its margins stabilised and scale proven, the tech enabler is now gearing up for its next phase, one driven by automation, analytics and AI-led decision systems across the fulfilment chain.

The timing is significant. India’s ecommerce market is estimated to surpass $400 Bn by 2030, fuelled by rising digital adoption in smaller cities and deeper integration of logistics and payment networks. But beneath this surge lies a quieter, yet equally important story — the rise of ecommerce enablers and SaaS platforms that handle order processing, fulfilment, returns and customer engagement for brands and marketplaces.

Globally, this layer of the digital economy has become a substantial industry. Verified Market Research estimated the ecommerce SaaS segment at about $13.8 Bn in 2023. It is projected to reach $15.9 Bn by 2031 at a 14.5% CAGR, as retailers transition from licensed software to cloud-native, subscription-based systems.

Hence, the next phase of growth at Unicommerce will be shaped by two forces: The explosive rise of the online retail economy at home and abroad, and the steady development of ecommerce SaaS.

The Long Game At Unicommerce: Patience Over Pace, Fiscal Discipline At Core

Unicommerce was set up in 2012 by three IIT Delhi batchmates — Ankit Pruthi, Karun Singla and Vibhu Garg. Manish Gupta joined the founding team later in 2013, as the startup began expanding its technology base.

At the time, ecommerce in India was still in its early stages, marked by fragmented and largely manual operations. Singla, who was previously associated with AceVector Group, the parent company of Snapdeal, had seen those inefficiencies firsthand — misplaced orders, inventory mismatches and the absence of a unified system to stitch together fulfilment and warehousing.

That experience was the kernel of the Unicommerce concept. The founders wanted to build a technology layer that would make the backend of ecommerce as seamless as the buying experience at the front end. Their flagship was Uniware, a web-based system for order processing, inventory management and warehouse control. It laid the foundation for what would eventually become one of the most comprehensive ecommerce enablement platforms (more on its product suite later).

After Snapdeal acquired Unicommerce in 2015 for an undisclosed amount, the business continued to grow steadily and remained profitable. Despite the upheaval in 2018, when Infibeam’s INR 120 Cr deal to acquire the Snapdeal subsidiary fell through, it operated without major disruptions and reported a loss only once, in FY20.

Snapdeal was attempting to divest its non-core assets at the time, even as Unicommerce was catering to nearly 10K sellers and brands, according to media reports. Post its IPO, it operates as an independent, publicly listed subsidiary of Snapdeal’s parent company AceVector Group.

According to MD and CEO Kapil Makhija, the FY20 losses were a one-off case. “The loss that year was largely on account of ESOP grants to the core team. It also reflected our focus on investing in people and rewarding long-term performance, a principle that continues to underpin our growth strategy,” he told Inc42 during an exclusive interaction.

“Otherwise, our adjusted EBITDA, which underscores our operational performance, has always been positive, even in FY20. In fact, it has remained positive since FY18.”

For a company like Unicommerce, which has been in business for 13 years and caters to an industry globally projected to reach nearly $74 Tn by 2030, a few fluctuations might not have mattered much. But as Makhija noted, it aimed to build a sound business, step by step, rather than chasing aggressive growth.

“One of the biggest strategic decisions we made was to build this business patiently,” said Makhija.

“We did not follow a growth-at-all-costs approach. That was a conscious choice because we knew we might be handling 100 Mn shipments today, but it would eventually reach a billion. The focus on building patiently, with fiscal discipline at the core, has kept the company profitable and growing consistently.”

Today, Unicommerce has positioned itself as one of India’s largest and only profitable ecommerce enablement SaaS platforms within the transaction processing layer. As of Q2 FY26, it managed more than 11,700+ warehouses and store facilities, serving a client base of over 7.5K+ through 285+ technology integrations across marketplaces, logistics providers, point-of-sale systems, ERP and more.

In December 2024, Unicommerce acquired a 42.76% stake in Shipway Technology, including the latter’s Convertway business, for about INR 68.4 Cr. By March 2025, it completed the acquisition by purchasing the remaining 57.24%, making Shipway a wholly owned subsidiary.

Both platforms were fully integrated by March 31, 2025, and together achieved adjusted EBITDA break-even in Q4 FY25. As a result, in H1 FY26 (April–September 2025), the company’s revenue rose 69.6% YoY to INR 96.3 Cr, up from INR 56.8 Cr in H1 FY25, while PAT grew 21.1% YoY to INR 9.7 Cr from INR 8.0 Cr.

“Shipway has grown nearly 50% from the INR 55-60 Cr annualised run-rate at the time of its acquisition announcement a year ago to INR 86.9 Cr in Q2 FY 26, while also turning profitable,” said Makhija.

The acquisition broadened its product suite, with Shipway adding tools for courier aggregation, automated shipping and reduction in RTOs (returns to origin). Convertway features SMS and WhatsApp modules to help brands engage with prospects and customers.

Why Unicommerce Preferred A Patient Approach In A High-Growth Market

Even a decade ago, Indian ecommerce had a handful of homegrown heavyweights such as Snapdeal, Flipkart and ShopClues, Myntra and Jabong. Amazon had arrived as well. Yet, the collective push of these platforms could barely dent the dominance of physical retail. Fast forward to 2025, and that balance has shifted. Online commerce now drives how brands sell, scale and develop their consumer strategies.

As ecommerce expands, the underlying changes in the business architecture come with a cost. The ecosystem has become far more complex, impacting the survival of small and medium-sized businesses that operate almost entirely online.

Makhija breaks it down into three compounding problems.

The first is scale. What merchants saw a decade ago, let us say 100 orders a month and simple returns, is not what they are doing now. Volumes have leapt. The problem is no longer whether you can sell; it is whether you can process millions of orders reliably, day after day. That leap requires more processes, more partners and much tighter orchestration, as volume doesn’t scale linearly. It multiplies risk.

The second critical issue is the evolving business models. Ecommerce no longer offers a single route to market. It runs multiple models simultaneously, and new ones continue to emerge. Omnichannel hubbing was just a buzzword a decade ago. But it now sits at the core of every retail strategy. Similarly, quick commerce transitioned from pilot to major contributor in under three years. Merchants must adapt to each model’s cadence and economics to stay competitive.

The third is the rise of vertical platforms. A decade ago, horizontal marketplaces like Flipkart and Amazon captured most transactions. Today, a specific business — say, a fashion brand — needs a strong presence on a vertical marketplace like Myntra or Ajio that focusses on that category. Each requires different operations, different integrations. And the playbook splinters.

Put together, these developments have recast ecommerce from a marketing problem into an engineering and operational challenge. Execution is no longer a minor back-office task. It poses constraints that make or mar margins, fulfilment times and customer experience. For many sellers, success now depends as much on systems and partners as on products and pricing.

“Given this scenario, brands now manage many more marketplaces, business models and channels. In fact, these are just a few examples. I could spend hours talking about the layers of complexity that have emerged,” said Makhija.

“Therefore, over the past decade, Unicommerce has grown alongside its customers, solving one problem at a time, instead of chasing aggressive growth in a single direction.”

It took strategic decisions (more on that later) to rebuild its tech algorithms, grow its product suite, scale its total addressable market (TAM) and align pricing with what growing businesses could actually afford.

This approach built defensibility, keeping the company relevant as the ecosystem evolved, while rivals spent heavily on customer acquisition that did not last. That is how Unicommerce keeps its edge, running the business with patience and a focus on sustainability.

The Four Pillars Of Unicommerce Success

Unicommerce has come to define the infrastructure layer of India’s ecommerce stack. The platform connects enterprise systems, marketplaces and logistics partners through deep integrations that ensure data flows smoothly and operations run in sync. Over the years, this depth of connectivity has made it a critical enabler for brands navigating scale and complexity in a fast-changing digital commerce market.

Makhija says the company focusses on strengthening customer relationships and building technology that keeps pace with evolving business models, rather than chasing market share. Becoming a listed entity has also reinforced its credibility and given brands greater confidence in the company’s long-term reliability, he added. Here is a closer look at the four strategies that have anchored the growth of Unicommerce and paved its path to success.

Product Syncing With Market Requirements

Around 2015, Unicommerce began scaling its existing product suite to serve a bigger clientele and help sellers manage their growing online operations. At its core was Uniware, which brought together warehouse and inventory management systems, multi-channel order processing and a seller/vendor management panel for marketplaces.

“We believe that technology should make commerce simpler and more accessible, so that businesses can operate smarter, work more efficiently and scale with ease. We have been doing this for nearly 15 years now, growing and evolving as the market has evolved,” said Makhija.

He cited a critical use case. A seller listing 100 units of a mobile phone model across Amazon, Flipkart and (back then) ShopClues would usually risk overselling. So, Unicommerce ensured that when one unit was sold on a platform, the inventory count would automatically decrease by one across all platforms.

“It’s what our system enabled back then and continues to do today, providing a centralised inventory management solution that tracks and synchronises orders from multiple channels in real time. That was the core use case we started with, although the platform has undergone many iterations and improvements since then. In the early phase, the focus was on building this foundational layer and primarily serving the SMEs/SMBs,” added Makhija.

‘Enterprise’ Layer For Boosting Revenue

Between 2017 and 2019, a period marked by significant market development, Unicommerce introduced an enterprise plan alongside its offerings for small and medium-sized businesses. The SMB plan still offers its multi-channel order management system, the first product it launched. The new enterprise plan, on the other hand, bundles advanced capabilities, including warehouse management, omnichannel retail, ERP integrations and other enterprise-grade tools.

As Makhija explained, the need for an enterprise layer became clear when brands that once managed a few thousand SKUs geared up for lakhs or even millions.

“We realised that to handle that scale efficiently, they needed an automated system, one that could track where every item sat in the warehouse and manage inventory and payments across channels seamlessly,” he said.

Over the course of three to four years, these capabilities were enhanced and expanded beyond multi-channel order management. Unicommerce launched several products, including the Omnichannel Retail Management System (Omni-RMS) and UniReco, a tool that automates order, return, and payment reconciliations across sales channels.

The real impact of these solutions shows up in daily operations. For example, a seller listing on Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal has to file GST returns each month. Without a platform like Unicommerce, the process would involve manually downloading the sales data, entering it into Tally or a similar software programme, generating reports and then completing the filing.

“With Unicommerce, all of this happens automatically, with just a click. In short, we simplify how businesses operate,” said Makhija.

Category Depth And Global Reach

Unicommerce is a sector-agnostic platform, catering to all key categories, including FMCG, pharma and nutrition, fashion, footwear and accessories, and beauty and personal care (BPC), among others. However, each sector has its own nuances, as Makhija observed.

In fashion and jewellery, for instance, brands want to track every single item and assign a unique barcode to each piece that leaves the warehouse. In the FMCG sector, the priority is expiry management, ensuring that products nearing their shelf lives are not shipped to customers. In BPC, where items such as lipsticks are small, the challenge lies in designing compact barcodes that fit on them.

“There are many such use cases that the platform has been able to address over time, giving brands the confidence that this is truly a sector- and scale-agnostic system,” said Makhija.

Unicommerce also made a conscious effort to diversify its client base. The acquisition of Shipway and its global expansion were part of the strategy to broaden its TAM. The international rollout did not demand heavy R&D. It mainly required local integrations and adjustments for tax and compliance rules. This calibrated approach allowed the company to scale efficiently.

Outside its home market, Unicommerce has operations in UAE and KSA across the Middle East and The Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore across Southeast Asia. Its flagship product Uniware now caters to 1000+ enterprise clients.

Technology Engineered To Scale

As a technology platform, Unicommerce has consistently prioritised R&D and building a stable, scalable architecture, a focus that became even more critical as it started working with large enterprises. It currently processes more than a billion transactions annually, up from around 200 Mn a few years ago, while maintaining its backend stability as volumes grow.

The company has bypassed intermediaries and directly integrated with ecosystem players, including ERP systems such as Tally, SAP and Oracle, as well as marketplaces, logistics providers and other technology platforms. Together, these deep integrations have created a connected backend that functions as the operational brain of ecommerce, managing orders, inventory and fulfilment across every channel. Although the core technology stack has not changed much, the team invests in upgrades and new capabilities to meet evolving requirements.

However, investment in technology has not come at the expense of cost efficiency. Server and hosting expenses steadily declined from 5.5% of revenue in FY22 to 4.5% in FY25, thereby strengthening operating leverage.

What kind of impact does Unicommerce create?

“Well, for ecommerce, peak sales seasons mean high-stakes moments, frantic operations and a fair amount of stress,” said Makhija. “But after coming on board, a founder told me it was the first hassle-free sales season he’d ever had, the first time he could actually sleep peacefully even during that period.”

“That’s what we do. We shoulder the operational complexity, allowing businesses to focus on growth. These are deliberate choices. They define our DNA, how we build the company and how it runs.”

How Unicommerce Is Powering Growth With AI

At Unicommerce, the competitive edge lies in its dedicated push to embed AI across products to optimise outcomes. While rule-based features remain part of the system, the company is rapidly integrating data-driven models to enhance advanced capabilities, including outbound quality control, real-time inventory tracking, demand forecasting and analytics.

The shift is substantive, not cosmetic. The company has shortened development cycles from quarters to weeks, enabling faster innovation, deeper automation and smart decision support for both clients and internal teams.

Take RTOs, for instance, a persistent drag on ecommerce profitability and customer experience. ShipSense tackles these issues by identifying repeat returns through data insights and then triggering automated alerts before dispatch.

An alert prompts a confirmation call or a message that goes out to verify whether the customer will actually receive the order. This minimises avoidable returns and improves delivery rates. That reliability has built deep trust among brands, which tend to lean more on Unicommerce during festive season surges, when every order counts.

However, Unicommerce’s AI play is part of a broader industry shift, with several peers following suit. Companies like Increff, Vinculum and EasyEcom are also incorporating AI into their platforms for faster and more efficient operations. But the bigger push is coming from the logistics sector.

Delhi-based logistics unicorn Shiprocket has recently rolled out new features to reduce RTOs, while Shadowfax, Delhivery, Ecom Express (acquired by Delhivery earlier this year) and Pickrr (acquired by Shiprocket in 2022) are deploying AI to improve routing, speed and efficiency. That broader approach is raising the sectoral baseline.

Makhija drew a clear distinction. Logistics players such as Shiprocket may dominate logistics volumes, he said, but Unicommerce plays a broader game. “Logistics is only one component of a larger ecommerce enablement stack, while many other players such as Shiprocket are primaly a vertical player specialising in last-mile scale. Unicommerce, by contrast, spans the entire customer journey,” he said. “Our solutions start even before an order is placed, and we aim to cover everything, from marketing and order creation to fulfilment and returns.”

Following the Shipway integration, Unicommerce can operate as an end-to-end solution provider, managing all these stages more seamlessly. While logistics intelligence enhances order routing and customer confirmations, engagement and reconciliation modules close the revenue loop.

In the company’s framing, AI acts as a force multiplier, reducing manual workflow, improving unit economics and strengthening its value proposition to brands that depend on reliable fulfilment at scale.

Next On The Cards: Building A Unified Commerce Backbone

Unicommerce entered the market when brick-and-mortar retail underwent significant changes. The company has since ridden successive waves, first the shift from offline to online, and then the rise of omnichannel retail, which integrates both. What began as a SaaS platform for online sellers has evolved into a comprehensive system that caters to traditional ecommerce, quick commerce and physical stores, each requiring a unified commerce strategy to drive sales and enhance customer experience.

Interestingly, the quick commerce boom has introduced a logistical wrinkle. Brands today manage bulk shipments to Blinkit- and Zepto-style warehouses while fulfilling individual orders. This has prompted digital-first and legacy brands to seek a centralised system that can reconcile all sales channels efficiently.

Take Mamaearth, a beauty and personal care brand that leverages Unicommerce solutions to manage marketplace sales, inventory for modern trade stores such as Reliance and D-Mart, and stock distribution to quick commerce partners. The same technology supports omnichannel retail, where customers can buy online and return in-store, or order in-store for home delivery.

“Our clients are our biggest source of innovation,” said Makhija. “Every new requirement pushes us to build better, and that’s how we have become a one-stop platform for ecommerce and retail enablement.”

The SaaS platform is anchoring its expansion on four growth strategies. It aims to increase revenue from its existing customer base through a broader and more innovative product suite, an approach that aligns with overall market trends. Additionally, it will continue to onboard enterprise customers, further diversify its product portfolio through acquisitions and in-house R&D, and expand its global footprint.

“Our international business is still small, contributing 4-5% of overall revenues, but it is growing steadily. What’s exciting is the pace we have reached. We are now adding 350-400 enterprise clients every year. What once took seven years now takes just two and a half,” observed Makhija.

Logistics, according to him, is another significant growth opportunity. As courier aggregation and shipping automation demand constant innovation, Unicommerce is leveraging AI and data analytics to optimise routing, reduce turnaround times, and enhance delivery reliability. It is also deepening integrations with incumbent carriers and onboarding emerging hyperlocal delivery players to capitalise on the rapid growth of quick commerce.

As Unicommerce doubles down on its growth strategies and sharpens its execution to leverage emerging opportunities, a key question remains. Can it go beyond operational excellence and define the next phase of intelligent, full-stack ecommerce enablement? The answer will determine whether it simply remains a dependable backbone or becomes a defining force in the next phase of retail.

[Edited by Sanghamitra Mandal]