City-based digital payment platform Instamojo has acquired Times Internet-owned GetMeAShop, a digital commerce platform for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), for $5 million in cash. This is Instamojo’s first acquisition since its inception in 2012, and will allow the startup to branch into software offerings.
Instamojo launched as a payment gateway for MSMEs, and later branched into an e-commerce platform for merchants to list and sell their products and services online. It had launched a lending product–MojoCapital–and a last-mile logistics service, branded MojoXPress, focused on its merchants in 2018.
Currently, Instamojo claims to have around 1 million registered merchants on its platform. Sampad Swain, chief executive of Instamojo, told Mint that the startup used to get almost all its revenue directly from payments till 2018.
However, following the launch of its logistics and credit product in 2018, non-payments revenue now account for around 20% of Instamojo’s overall revenue.
“With the latest acquisition of GetMeAShop, we want to move that 20% to around 40-50% via non-payments revenue,” Swain said. The startup plans to achieve this by launching a new graphical interface that will allow its sellers to build their own website landing page, listing structure, and a tool to build their own custom web store similar to Shopify.
“We will integrate GetMeAShop directly into Instamojo platform, and launch a new tool for customizing web stores in the next quarter…we feel that Indian MSMEs have arrived, and now they are more than eager to pay for new software to help support their business,” added Swain during a telephonic interview.
GetMeAShop is a full-fledged Software as a Service (SaaS) platform that helps MSMEs adopt software into their business without any prior technical knowledge. It offers a website and online store builder, logistics support, CRM software, native Android and iOS mobile apps support, social selling via WhatsApp and Facebook, and marketing tools offered using SMS, Email, push notifications and data analytics.
“We’re very excited to join the Instamojo family. With a common mission to enable MSMEs it’s a partnership which will give us distribution specific to the target segment we’ve been going after for all these years. And with our full-stack SaaS offering for MSMEs with web/ commerce builder, CRM and analytics built-in we augment the existing offerings of Instamojo perfectly. Looking forward to an amazing journey of growth and empowerment of SMEs,” Pushkal Srivastava, founder of GetMeAShop said in a statement.
Instamojo currently competes with other B2B focused lending services such as Aye Finance, Capital Float, Namaste Credit, and Lendingkart in the SME lending space, and those such as Razorpay, CCAvenue, CitrusPay, and PayUbiz in the B2B focused payment services space.
Instamojo had last raised $7.75 million in its Series B funding from Gunosy Capital, AnyPay-a Japanese payments firm, and other existing investors in January 2019. Its existing investors include Kalaari Capital, Blume Ventures, 500Startups and others.
