Online shopping startup Alphatise is heading for a stock market listing and overseas expansion after being saved from the brink of collapse.
The move marks a big comeback for the four-year-old tech company, which sank into voluntary administration in March 2015 amid disputes between its core investors and major cash flow problems.
A challenger to online shopping meccas Amazon and Ebay, Alphatise allows shoppers to name their price for an item they want to buy and for retailers to match it.
Its merchants, including Harvey Norman Commercial, sell thousands of products ranging from clothing and perfumes to kitchen appliances and TVs with Alphatise taking a five to eight per cent cut of each sale.
In its first incarnation, the `haggling' platform posted 100,000 listing offers and gained 20,000 users before running into funding problems with investors and suffering a $2.8 million loss.
"I felt the core vision of the company was being lost really quickly so I put the company into the administrator's hands, a safe harbour really to reset the company," co-founder Paul Pearson told AAP.
He bought back the system technology from administrators last June and relaunched the e-commerce platform.
Now roaring along in its reboot, the startup is looking to the market to fuel its ambition of expanding to 25 countries in two years through local joint ventures.
In its initial public offering which closes on January 29, Alphatise Limited is offering 10 million shares at 20 cents each to raise $2 million.
Most of the money will help fund the company's expansion, with Mr Pearson saying the core focus is on the booming e-commerce markets in South-East Asia where marketing and user acquisition costs are cheaper and the retail market less defined than Australia's.
"If you look at Australia there's a Westfield on every corner, whereas somewhere like India the retail sector is less mature, and if you talk to the locals they're buying a lot online," he said.
Mr Pearson plans to expand to India, and the Philippines following the share market float, with Malaysia to follow.
"All we're looking to do in the first three to six months is to go out and smash three countries and prove the model works," he said.
The company also plans to roll out more tech products around consumer shopping data.
Its board of directors includes retail veteran John Skippen, a former finance director of 12 years at Harvey Norman and current non-executive director of Super Retail Group.
Alphatise shares are expected to start trading on the Australian Securities Exchange on February 10.
