FirstCry, a e-commerce retailer specialised in babycare, has reported a six-times higher jump in its losses to Rs 486 Crore in FY23. Expenses keep soaring despite a 2 times jump in sales, according to its RoC filing recorded from Private Circle.
Rollercoaster of Revenue and Losses
The company marked a revenue from operations of Rs 5,632 Cr in FY23, double revenue as compared to the Rs 2,401 Crore in FY22. Also, its expenses increased to 146% to Rs 6,316 crore, from Rupees 2,568 crore in FY22.
As per the report reveals, material-related costs accounts for 62% of overall cost securing the highest among other expenses. A jump to 3,935 Cr from 1,572 Cr in FY 2022 has been noted.
Employee-related costs jumped to 127% whereas advertising, marketing and its associated promotional expenses spiked to 55%. In addition, depreciation and amortisation expenses have also skyrocketed to Rs 294 Cr.
The latest financial statement identified a notable surge in areas like finance(Rs 72 crores) and ESOP( Rs 361 crore), thus leading to a significant decrease in profits.
The core business continues to grow well with positive bottom line and profitability and the overall business growth marked at 135%, as per the company statement.
In recent years, the company had turned out quite profitable in FY21, generating a revenue of Rs 216 Crore, as compared to the loss of Rs 162.7 Cr in the preceding years. Since the company continued to expand its retail footprint over years so far, it scaled its revenue consistently.
FirstCry is about to file the draft of IPO
The company has a reported valuation of about $3.5-3.75 Billion. The Soft-bank backed startup is about to file its first draft of IPO(Initial Public Offerings) with SEBI( Securities and Exchange Board of India). Through its first public offerings it expected to raise $500 Million from which 60 percent would go for Offer-for- Sale(OFS).
Founded in 2010 jointly by Supam Maheswari and Amitava Saha, the Pune-based unicorn FirstCry has acquired M&M’s baby care wing “BabyOye” for Rupees 362 crore, and later merged both the businesses together as FirstCry.com. Also, it entered the education field by acquiring the playschool chain ‘Oi Playschool’ in 2019.
Softbank sold the acquired shares
The latest report also revealed that its biggest institutional investor SoftBank has divested from the company through selling their shares worth $310 million ahead of its IPO. However, SoftBank had invested $400 million in the company earlier.
The financial report exposed that family offices of cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan, Ravi Modi from Manyavar, the wedding specialised ethnic clothing brand, had bought the shares in a secondary transaction.
