Halal e-commerce provider DagangHalal eyes AIM IPO in March

Despite volatile market conditions, DagangHalal.com, a Malaysia-based e-commerce site for verifying halal food and other goods, is pushing ahead with its listing plans in March.

The company will float its shares on the London Stock Exchange’s mid-cap market AIM, it said in a statement. It hopes to raise 4 million pounds through sales of its shares in Malaysia and London. This will give it an overall market value of 12.5 million pounds.

DagangHalal has hired London brokers Arden and Optiva to sell its shares.

DagangHalal touts itself as the world’s first global e-marketplace to provide halal verifcation. As of February 2016, the group had built partnerships with 37 halal certification bodies. The platform has so far supported more than 3,500 sellers of halal products and services.

In 2014, the group posted 3.4 million Ringgit in revenue, a 187 percent increase from 1.18 million Ringgit posted in 2012.

The firm works with various government and independent halal authorities across Asia to check the halal compliance of food suppliers.  It verifies food, consumer goods, pharmaceuticals and leisure sites for their  halal compliance.

Based in Malaysia, it aims to expand into European markets and consolidate the different halal certificates for suppliers into a single site. It also provides consultancy services and offers training courses for suppliers.

“Market participants want to be sure that the products they are buying are genuine halal and our HVE (halalverified,com) portal and e-marketplace is able, for the first time, to give complete confidence in product authenticity,” DagangHalal’s chief executive officer Mohamed Hazli Mohamed said in a statement.

“With widespread internet use and smartphone adoption across the world’s Muslim population, we now have the infrastructure to be able to check product authenticity anytime and anywhere,” he said.

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