IndiaMART belongs to the first generation of internet companies such as Just Dial, Info Edge (India), MakeMyTrip etc., that scaled in a bootstrapped environment and in a linear fashion with tightly-run operations without having sleepless nights over valuations and discount-driven customer acquisition.
On one hand, there are startups, which emerged in over a decade and quickly leapfrogged their value to multi-billion dollars with their hyper-funded non-linear growth under the glory of famed venture capitalists and fuel by deep discounts with questionable loyalty and business model to an extent. On the other hand, there are companies such as Just Dial, Info Edge (India), MakeMyTrip on the B2C e-commerce side and IndiaMART on the B2B e-commerce side, which have emerged and been built in a bootstrapped environment and grown in a linear fashion with tightly-run operations without having sleepless nights over valuations and discount-driven customer acquisition.
You might also be interested to read: IT Industry, Startups Meet Thakur to Discuss Data Protection, Tax Issues
Strong and Steady
While the ones on the B2C side had already chosen IPO as their road to the next level of growth, IndiaMART, among the oldest B2B e-commerce companies in India too have found its rightful place in public listing with the recent IPO that performed good — subscribed by nearly 36 times on the last day of bidding this week.
IndiaMART, in terms of business performance, had 55 lakh sellers on its platform with products listed across 97,000 categories as of FY19. Its paid supplier base increased from 72,000 in FY2016 to 1.3 lakh in FY19 at a CAGR of 21 per cent while its revenue grew at 29 per cent CAGR to Rs 507 crore during FY14-19, as per Angel Broking. The company turned profitable in FY18 with Rs 55 crore in net profit that declined to Rs 20 crore in FY19. IndiaMART had 8.27 crore registered buyers as of March 31, 2019. The company was founded in 1996 by Dinesh Agarwal and Brijesh Agarwal.
Source: Financial Express
