 "Deal structuring eased, teething troubles remain")
Sumit Gandhi and Manish Gandh, promoters of Asian Business Exhibitions and Conferences (ABEC), on Monday announced the acquisition of Delhi-based managed marketplace PosterGully in their individual capacity. The size of the transaction was not disclosed.
Founded by Bharat Sethi, PosterGully enables artists and designers to contribute and merchandise designs in a variety of products, such as home decor, furnishings, apparels and technology accessories to consumers globally. It currently claims to have over 5,000 artists selling on the platform with over 1.5 million unique visitors in 2016.
Over the last two years, the e-commerce company claims to have shipped out over 600,000 stock keeping units. PosterGully got the initial backing by industry veterans like Murugavel J, Dinesh Agarwal, Natarajan Iyer, Nish Bhutani, Anupam Mittal, Roshan Abbas, Rajesh Sawhney among others and raised $160,000 in June last year.
PosterGully, as a platform, will continue to operate under a new leadership and will be actively looking to strengthen its brand presence. Bharat Sethi, founder & CEO of PosterGully, will move out of day-to-day operations but continue to advice and serve on the board. He will take charge as executive director and CEO of iDecorama — a technology-enabled platform engineered to take the building, designing and remodelling industry online. iDecorama is also backed by the Gandhi brothers in their individual capacity.
ABEC has 10-12 per cent market share in India, making it the largest private exhibition organiser in the country. In 2010, Qatar's leading Investment bank QInvest acquired minority stake in ABEC, which was followed by an exit in favour of ITE Group which enhanced their stake to majority in 2015.
ABEC also organises ACETECH, India’s largest exhibition related to architecture, design, building materials and construction. ACETECH is attended by over 600,000 visitors every year, including leading architects, interior designers, consultants, planners, developers and home owners.
Announcing the acquisition, Manish Gandhi said, “The team at PosterGully has displayed true signs of grit over the last few years building a solid, thriving community-led e-commerce marketplace that has performed admirably on all accounts: Business growth, cost metrics, customer experience, and quality of execution. With this acquisition, we are committed to a digital first approach across all our businesses.”
Commenting on the development, Bharat Sethi said, “We’ve gone onto create a fundamentally sound business and this is a perfect match that has use for all the skills the core team of PosterGully has garnered over the years, specially around growing online communities and blending content with commerce. The buyers have a compelling vision for the future and I’m confident that PosterGully’s customers, community, and partners will benefit from these exciting new developments. We’re going to have a bigger team with bigger resources solving bigger problems."
