Mobile engagement software firm IMImobile eyes over $50M in IPO through London's junior stock exchange AIM

London-based IMImobile Ltd, a provider of mobile engagement software to mobile operators which has a development centre in India and was started by founders of Indian origin, is planning to float an initial public offering (IPO) on London Stock Exchange's junior market AIM.

The company will seek to raise gross proceeds of up to £30 million (over $50 million) in the public issue. Net proceeds of the issue will be used to drive revenue and profit growth from the core business, exploit more revenue opportunities in key verticals, maximise opportunities in select geographic markets and take advantages of opportunities to consolidate a fragmented market, it said on Friday.

Spark Advisory Partners is acting as nominated adviser.

"We have been helping our clients take advantage of the structural trends surrounding mobile communications, social networking and cloud computing for a number of years. In that time, we have built a robust technology platform and strong client relationships. As a result, we are well placed to deliver sustained long-term revenue and profit growth," said IMImobile's CEO Jay Patel.

IMImobile was founded by Viswanatha Reddy Alluri (executive chairman) and Shyamprasad Subramanya Bhat (CTO).

Its solutions, based on its own intellectual property, enables clients to engage and transact with their customers efficiently through smarter mobile engagement using mobile as a channel to create new revenue streams, as a CRM and customer engagement channel and to improve business efficiency.

The company's clients include mobile operators and blue-chip enterprises worldwide such as Vodafone, O2, Telefonica, Aircel, Airtel, BSNL, AT&T, Mobitel, MTN and France Telecom, Centrica, Coca-Cola, Universal Music, Tata, the AA and BBC.

The company supports clients in over 60 countries and has 650 employees worldwide.

For the year ended March 31, 2013, it had revenues of £38.5 million with an underlying EBITDA of £6.1 million.

It would be the second such AIM float of an India-related new age tech firm in the recent past. Early this year, the parent entity of lifestyle e-commerce venture Koovs listed on AIM, becoming the first non-travel e-commerce venture in the country to go public. The public issue was fully underwritten.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)