In this article, we will talk about how Instamojo started, what milestones it has achieved, and why it is diversified into an e-commerce platform incorporating Ankur Sharma to the founding team.
The beginning of the digital era attracted the inception of a Bangalore-based company Instamojo in 2012. At first, the priority was to enable digital payments by launching its first product, the “payment link,” a simple URL that anyone can copy and paste all over the Internet and receive online payments via a payment mode.
But in 2018, the company made this realization that a business model based autonomously on payments would not sustain itself for a longer time.
Thus, the demand for a sustainable model with features like higher margins, pitching network effects, and brand affinity was the need of the hour, which ingrained the idea of diversifying Instamojo into an e-commerce platform.
Instamojo- Ankur Sharma takes charge
In its recent developments, Instamojo addressed Ankur Sharma as a co-founder, a graduate from IIT Madras who joined the company in 2015 as the vice-president of analytics.
As a vice-president, Ankur has contributed to the developments of the company’s data science and growth hacking departments.
Now, he is designated for expanding and growing the e-commerce product line, which includes a web store builder and smart pages.
Instamojo- founders and history
Sampad Swain graduated from IBS Hyderabad, started his blog Instartup.com and co-founded a few startups, Dealsandyou.com and WanaMo.com. Aditya Sengupta is an alumnus of IIT Bombay, and Akash Gehni pursued MBA in Finance.
Following the same thought of entrepreneurship, they contributed to launching a full-fledged startup Instamojo.
In September 2012, Sampad Swain, with Aditya Sengupta, and Akash Gehani, co-founded Instamojo as a payment gateway for Micro, Small, Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) to accept all types of payments and transfers.
The founders released the API and enabled payment with Instamojo. This was a great initiative as it allowed many new developers to make money with the platform and gave them the chance to be part of the ecosystem.
It was also a unique payment solution as there was no bank involved in processing the transactions.
The term “Instamojo,” which means “instant magic,” was derived from Sampad’s blog name Instartup.com, and his love for Harry Potter was the source of mojo or magic.
Instamojo- Funding, Investors, and competitors.
The company has raised a total of $8.4 million in funding over six rounds. It raised $2.6 million through Series A round funding in 2014, followed by raising funds $7 million through the Series B round in 2019. Its latest fundraising was in March 2020.
Instamojo competes with payment platform companies like Razorpay, CC Avenue, PayU, Amazon pay, and more.
Instamojo- Achievements and Milestones
In August 2018, Instamojo re-established itself as a financial services player, diversifying into providing logistics and lending products for MSMEs such as MojoXpress and MojoCapital, respectively.
Instamojo has evolved to become the largest online marketplace for buyers and sellers of online goods and services with 1.2 million+ product Link, 10,000+ Stores, 4 lakhs monthly reach, 65% non-metro sellers, and 70% mobile shoppers.
The company has closed FY20 with 1.5 million merchants.
Instamojo- Future Plans
The future goal is to encourage entrepreneurs to expand their businesses over the Internet by providing them with all the resources they need.
Simultaneously, the company aims to reach this concept in other countries worldwide.
Company is looking forward to building a unified payment gateway for all its 700,000 registered MSMEs.
Final thoughts
Instamojo has paved the way for non-technical businesses to accept payment on major e-commerce platforms. This gateway offers the vendors and their customers the option to buy goods and services. And now, it will provide them with a dedicated e-commerce platform with the support of Ankur Sharma on board, allowing them to promote and sell their products digitally.
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