IndiaMART InterMESH Ltd. is an Indiane-commercecompany that provides B2C, B2B and customer to customer sales services via its web portal. The group began in 1996 when Dinesh Agarwal and Brijesh Agrawal founded the website IndiaMART.com, a business-to-business portal to connect Indian manufacturers with buyers. The company is headquartered in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India. IndiaMART had an aggregate of 32.5 crore, 55.2 crore and 72.3 crore visits in fiscals 2017, 2018 and 2019, respectively, of which 20.4 crore, 39.6 crore and 55 crore were mobile traffic, which is 63%, 72% and 76% of total traffic, respectively. Currently the IndiaMART app has more than 1 crore downloads with a rating on Android. IndiaMart’s revenue registered a 29% CAGR over FY 2014-19 to ₹507 crore while it reported a net profit of ₹20 crore in FY19, according to a note from Angel Broking. It has zero debt and sizeable cash balance. As of March 31, 2019, the company had 8.27 crore registered buyers and had 55.5 lakh supplier storefronts in India and expect to maintain a compounded annual growth rate of 29 per cent for the next two years. In 2016 and 2019, IndiaMART invested in ProcMart and Vyapar. IndiaMART was the first company to test the IPO market in the Modi Government’s Second tenure.
Background
The cousins, Dinesh Agarwal and Brijesh Agrawal launched IndiaMART as a directory of the websites for customers in the Delhi-NCR region. At that time India had only 15,000 internet users. By 1999, the directory had more than 1000 listings. After overcoming the dot-com bust, in 2008-2009, when the recession hit US, the company decided to pivot the focus from export oriented business to India-focused B2B market and raised $10 million from Intel Capital. In November 2014, IndiaMART started promotional campaigns featuring Indian film actorIrrfan Khan as its brand ambassador. Over the last 10 years, IndiaMART has become the largest e-commerce platform for businesses with about 60% market share, according to research firm KPMG. It handles 97,000 product categories — ranging from machine parts, medical equipment and textile products to cranes, from thousands of towns and cities of India. Agfa HealthCare India, Case New Holland Construction Equipment, Hilti India, JCB India and Nobel Hygiene are a few big suppliers on the company’s marketplace. In 2019, IndiaMART went public, and it was by far the first online B2B marketplace to go public. IndiaMART opened IPO to raise over ₹474 Crore at a price brand of ₹970- ₹973 on the 24th of June, 2019. IndiaMART IPO was fully subscribed by Day 2, and was oversubscribed by 36 times by the end of the final day of the biding.
Funding
In early 2009, the firm received ₹50 crore Series A round funding from Intel Capital, a part of which was invested in IndiaMART, One97 Communications and Global Talent Track. In March 2016, it raised Series C Funding from Amadeus Capital Partners and Quona Capital. It is claimed that these funds will be used to scale up the activities of IndiaMART and Tolexo. In June 2018 IndiaMART has filled draft papers with SEBI to raise $88.24 million through IPO and list on NSE and BSE exchange.
