iPay on expansion spree; forays into Indonesia

NEW DELHI: Tech start-up iPay has partnered with Indonesian Telecom Company to provide technological support to the company and also plans to foray into three more countries--South Africa, Vietnam and Bangladesh.

With this association, iPay intends to create the largest neighborhood e-tailer network without owning any shop and inventory. It believes that this e-commerce model is not only required in India but in every country with small retailers.

To make the expansion process smooth in a foreign land, iPay will get retailer assisted e-tailing through its platform. It will also help the company gather a lot of data from grass root levels to predict what customers needs.

It has spent 80% of its bootstrapped money in developing cutting edge technology for retailers; hence it is monetizing it to make the company self-sustainable. Till date, its technology product development division was its cost center, in terms of building IP. However, after this association, the division has become a revenue center as well.

These expansions will help its technology division to become more profitable while the operations team focuses on expansion in India.

As per the agreement, iPay will assist them with full stake of technology starting from its intellectual property and patented technology comprising retailer operating Android Customized Kiosk, technology that gets integrated with sellers and retailers, CRM solution developed in house, ticketing system and communication system for customers.

"The Indonesian Telecom company zeroed in on iPay in view of its Superior Technology created from the grass roots level that enables even a semi-literate and illiterate retailers to use the platform and benefit from it. During their India visit, the company personnels were quite surprised to see retailers operating with such ease," a statement said.

Krishna Lakamsani, Founder and CEO, iPay, said, “This association helps us expand into other countries without losing focus of our expansion plans in India. We intend to empower the common people around the world toindulge in e-commerce through neighborhood e-tailers. That will help us to see what kind of products are sold and customer preferences across emerging countries. Furthermore, Indonesia is very similar to India culturally and in terms of retail. The products being sold on our platform in India and demand for products are similar to each other in both the countries. In view of this, it seems like the right time for Indonesia to venture into this business model.”