Infibeam Avenues Limited, listed on the BSE and the NSE, is an Indian internet conglomerate involved in digital payments, e-commerce software and internet services. The company is headquartered in Ahmedabad, India. Its consumer ecommerce website Infibeam.com was acquired by Suvidhaa Infoserve in August 2019 and now operates as Suvideals.ooo.
In 2008, Infibeam created a student support site known as presentsir.com. Later, they acquired Picsquare.com, a photo printing website based in Bangalore. In August 2010, Infibeam.com launched www.infibeam.us for US consumers. Infibeam also launched an EBook reader, Infibeam Pi, its successor Pi2, and a media device, Infibeam Phi.
Vishal was born in a traditional big joint family in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. While there are no stats to prove but perhaps it has something to do with the Gujarat that breeds the most number of entrepreneurs in India. Once the bug hit him, he topped all academic exams and studied science and engineering in college.
Like many Indian students, he wanted to go abroad to pursue college studies and ended up with admissions at Cornell University where he studied Operations Research & Management. After graduating with honours, Vishal toyed with the idea of starting a company and even talked to a couple of friends about starting a company. But, like any cautious Indian, decided it is better to make some money first, and equally important, get some real world experience about the industry first.
He worked for more than a year at Dell which is a leading direct-to-consumer ecommerce company with the industry’s leading supply chain practice and worked at the intersection of computers and finance. He was still thinking about his dream of building a company, so decided to further his skills. To solidify his management skills, he pursued graduate studies in management at MIT. Once you know your dreams, you will work on learning everything there is to make that dream come true.
Coincidentally, by the time he graduated, the Internet bubble had burst! So it was difficult to raise capital and the future of ecommerce was doubtful. Then he looked at Amazon, the best of the breed, and found that there were some terrific smart people at all levels. Vishal worked at Amazon.com for several years in technology, finance and corporate development roles.
In 2007, he wanted to move back to India to pursue his dream of starting and building a technology company. For more than ten years of his life in the US, he had some savings accumulated but mostly invested in assets. He told his wife that they would need to sell house, car and all long term investments and place the funds behind this startup, plus move back to India. She was hesitant at first and making this commitment was not easy but she was super supportive and the startup was a “GO”. Just the week after they made that exciting decision, they found out that they were expecting their first kid! They got worried about the timing of the big move to India in that condition. He had given his resignation to the company, their house was on the sale block and they had booked their airline tickets. Expecting parent + Moving to India + startup was going to be very intense. But they had made a decision and a commitment, and they were going to stand by it.
The initial momentum in any startup is crucial and the first thing to do is build a solid team. He had 4 partners to join him in building the company. They were friends and colleagues who are known to him from college and work. They started in the good old fashioned boot-strapped way – working in someone’s garage, writing up a business plan, grinding out the product, and so on.
In 2011, Infibeam launched Buildabazaar, an online ecommerce platform which allows users to create their own web store. Infibeam became India’s first E-commerce company to file an IPO, in July 2015. In 2017, Infibeam merged with CCAVenue, India’s largest payment gateway by transactions, in a deal that valued the payment gateway at $289 million. In May 2018 Infibeam Inc. acquired 100% shareholding of Vavian International Ltd. Its consumer ecommerce website Infibeam.com was acquired by Suvidhaa Infoserve in August 2019 and now operates as Suvideals.ooo.
