Gujarat-based fintech company Infibeam Avenues has agreed to acquire a 54% stake in Rediff, one of India’s oldest internet firms.
In a filing with the BSE Friday, Infibeam said it invested around Rs 50 crore in Rediff, split equally between equity and debt. In lieu of the investment, Infibeam will get a 54% shareholding.
The payments company said it wants to close the deal within 90 days.
Infibeam said through the acquisition it intends to create a common ecosystem for payments, ecommerce, cloud services and content consumption. Eventually, it also wants to leverage the RediffMoney platform to cross-sell credit, insurance and investment products to its users. Rediff gets around 38 million monthly online visitors.
Rediff closed FY24 with an annual turnover of Rs 36 crore. The firm was founded in 1996 by Ajit Balakrishnan, offering content, email and enterprise services.
Infibeam Avenues announced the acquisition along with its June-quarter results. On a standalone basis, the company reported a net profit of Rs 36.4 crore, up 31% from Rs 27.7 crore a year earlier.
Operational revenue at Rs 682 crore was almost unchanged from a year earlier. In terms of business segments, its payments business generated gross revenue of Rs 643 crore while the remaining came from its ecommerce operations.
Its net revenue in the payments business — arrived at after taking away payment processing charges — stood at Rs 118 crore, up 20% from Rs 98.8 crore.
The company’s total payment value jumped to Rs 19,679 crore from Rs 11,826 crore a year earlier.
The fintech firm said its take rate or the share out of each transaction it processes, went up to 11.2 basis points from around 8.4 basis points a year earlier due to better operational metrics. The company now has more than 10 million merchants using its solutions, and is adding more than 2,500 merchants daily.
Infibeam shares rose 4.3% to close at Rs 32.30 Friday on the BSE where the benchmark Sensex ended about 1.1% down.
Source: Economic Times