With 102% rise in profit, e-commerce platfrom Infibeam reports highest ever growth

India's first listed e-commerce platform Infibeam has witnessed its revenue growing to Rs 839.3 crore in FY18, a 90 per cent growth in revenue on a year-on-year basis. It also reported a 102 per cent rise in net profit to Rs 88.1 crore, the highest ever growth observed in the company.

If you are wondering how the little known e-commerce platform against behemoths like Flipkart and Amazon made such profits, it has made business from its payment gateway segment.

In March 2017, Infibeam announced to invest Rs 210 Cr in CCAvenue and take full control over payment gateway with 11.35 percent stake in the company followed by full acquisition in July.

Within a year of the deal, the company has seen a steep rise in its payment business with transactions volumes witnessing a 77 per cent growth on a YoY basis clocking about 10 crore transactions in FY18 with total value of transactions worth Rs 21,550 crore.

Since the acquisition of the payment gateway, Infibeam has witnessed its revenue rising. It posted a net profit of Rs 30.8 crore on a consolidated total income of Rs 214.94 crore for the quarter ended December 2017. During the quarter, the company claims to have registered significant growth in revenue due to increase in a transaction both on digital and payment platform.

The ecommerce platform has also been trying various to increase the use case of its payment gateway. Last November, it managed to receive an in-principle license by apex banking body RBI for B2B payments of utility and service bills across the country. The Ahmedabad-based company leveraged its payment platform CCAvenue for it.

Since the company launched IPO in March 2016, it has never faltered on profits. Last year, it reported growth of 396 per cent, clocking a profit of Rs 43.5 crore in FY17.

It then attributed the profitability to its web services segment (Infibeam Web Service) with the revenue increased to Rs 53.9 crore, which was 97 per cent higher than Q4 FY16 and 56 per cent higher than FY16.

IWS business includes BuildaBazaar, which allows merchants to set-up and manages online store on a cloud platform.

The story was first reported by ET.