The firm has started the book-building process and capital markets and investment firm CLSA has been roped in as one of the managers for the initial public offering (IPO), they added.
Kunal Bahl, cofounder of AceVector Group that owns Snapdeal, Stellaro Brands and Unicommerce, hinted at the development in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on November 7, where he wrote, “2 iconic public companies in this photo and another one which hopefully will join them”.
He was talking about the recent debut of beauty and wellness brand Mamaearth and houseware company Cello World on the stock exchanges. Both of these are powered by Unicommerce’s technology services backing their omnichannel operations.
Unicommerce declined to comment on IPO plans. “We have no comments to offer on the company’s IPO plans. Unicommerce may evaluate various funding alternatives as per its business requirements,” it said in response to ET’s queries.
Bahl told ET, “Over the last decade, Unicommerce has built deep relationships with the ecommerce ecosystem and is serving the technology needs of brands, retailers and platforms in their pursuit of growth, efficiency and enhanced user experience. Its experience is helping it serve clients not only in India but also in multiple markets in Southeast Asia and the Middle East.”
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The business-to-business software-as-a-service platform, which was acquired by Snapdeal in 2015, provides the tech stack for end-to-end management of ecommerce operations such as warehouse and inventory management, order management, omnichannel retail management, and seller management for marketplaces.According to last fiscal’s financial statements, its platform saw 566 million transactions in 2022-23 – an increase of 38% over the previous year. Its operating revenue for this period was $900 million, nearly 53% increase over the previous year.
It is piloting another platform, Unireco, for payments reconciliation across marketplaces and internal systems of brands, Kapil Makhija, chief executive of Unicommerce, told ET.
“The product will help brands and small and medium businesses (SMBs) that operate via multiple marketplaces and have to individually track payment information for each package in the separate platforms,” Makhija said. “It will automate the payment reconciliation process and highlight discrepancies between the payments reflected across marketplaces and their internal systems.”
The 11-year-old company has been profitable for the last five years with over 700 enterprise clients and over 3,000 SMB clients. Some of its customers include Myntra and Lenskart, BPC brands like Mamaearth and mCaffeine, fashion names such as Fablestreet, Bestseller (which operates Vero Moda and Jack & Jones), and TCNS (which operates W and Aurelia). It also services logistics and warehousing majors Shiprocket and Delhivery.
In addition to Unireco, business from tier-2 and tier-3 cities is set to be a growth lever going forward, Makhija said. “In India, the growth story will continue with a lot of potential in tier 2 and tier 3 cities. Over the last few years, we have been seeing more queries coming in from there,” he said.
The consumer demand as well as the number of sellers in these parts have grown substantially, he added.
These cities saw higher growth than the metros during the pandemic years and continued to grow consistently, Makhija said. Tier 2 and 3 cities saw around 22%-23% year-on-year growth in order volumes in FY23, according to Unicommerce’s India Ecommerce Index 2023.
“The second lever of growth is international expansion,” Makhija said.
Unicommerce has forayed into six countries in West Asia and Southeast Asia and wants to go deeper into them.
Makhija said artificial intelligence (AI) provides visibility to customers and partners on pockets where returns propensity is higher, which platforms work better for a brand, which warehouse locations or styles work better, and so on.
“By distilling insights from data repositories, AI has the potential to reimagine how products are procured, stored, handled, and transported in the future,” he said. “It will be particularly useful in planning inventory, improving the regional utilisation of inventory, optimising returns inefficiencies and streamlining information flow for better decision-making.”