Infibeam acquires warehouse manager Unicommerce for Rs 120 Cr from Snapdeal

Distributed e-commerce market platform provider Infibeam has acquired 100 per cent stake in Snapdeal-owned SaaS-based warehouse management platform Unicommerce eSolutions.

Under the agreement, Infibeam will issue optionally convertible debentures on preferential basis to Jasper Infotech, the parent company of Snapdeal, valued up to Rs 120 crore, which will be subject to shareholders’ approval scheduled on Monday.

This is fourth business sold by Jasper Infotech, after it sold Freecharge, Gojavas and Vulcan Express to Axis Bank, Pigeon Express, and Future Group respectively.

The deal is part of the Snapdeal 2.0 plan to divest and focus on its core consumer e-commerce business. It had posted a loss of 12.6 per cent in revenue for FY17. Importantly, the company’s total revenue stood at Rs 1,291.3 crore in FY17 from Rs 1,478.2 crore in the previous year.

The deal would help the SoftBank-backed company to have a decent capital to invest in its effort to resurrect the business. Of late, Snapdeal reduced its team size to bring down the burn rate.

According to the company, it is on the path to making rapid progress in driving profitable growth, which will be reflected in the results for the FY18.

Meanwhile, through Unicommerce, Infibeam plans to boost its e-commerce enablement capabilities and expand the product offerings for existing clients. Unicommerce makes sense for Infibeam as it completes the missing piece of warehouse management for Buildabazaar and GeM (Government e-Marketplace).

Unicommerce, founded in 2012, was set up by three IIT-Delhi friends Ankit Pruthi, Karun Singla and Vibhu Garg. The company was later acquired by Snapdeal’s parent company Jasper Infotech in 2015 at about $40 million.

It offers multi-channel warehouse management solutions for e-commerce focused merchants.

The warehouse management platform claims to process over 100 million orders annually and has over 10,000 sellers across 220 cities on its platform. The client companies include Amazon, Jabong, Flipkart and eBay, Raymond, Ritu Kumar, and Puma.

Earlier in 2017, the Snapdeal-owned company also had spat with Paytm over data misuse. Paytm’s e-commerce platform also warned that any breach in this could result in either termination of contract or action for infringement of its legal rights.

The Noida-based firm also alleged that Unicommerce has used Paytm’s trade name in an unauthorised way and misled sellers by telling them that it has tied up with Paytm.