For a lot of businesses owners, preparing annual financial statements is a compliance formality to be fulfilled. Typically, this is how it goes – The senior accountant works with the auditors and replies to the queries. The accounts and the audit team prepares and finalises the financial statements. The business owners sit with the auditors in the last meeting to finalize the statements and sign them. And then it is over.

You do not read the financial statements to understand what they say. You might be looking at MIS reports, cash and working capital management but don’t review your own financial statements. This is an opportunity that you miss.

Analyzing financials provides a unique window into your business which can’t be substituted by MIS reports etc. They give you a bird’s eye view of all the functions of your business, from where you can dive into what you think needs attention. You can review the operational efficiency of your business from a financial angle, funding sources, operational and financial leverage, profitability and many other areas.

Besides, they also provide a common ground of comparison with other companies in your industry.  This comparison with the other similar companies or your competitors can provide crucial insights into your business performance, that no other internally generated MIS report can.

Myntra, which got acquired by Flipkart in May, 2014 has reported revenue figures of INR 773 crores against a loss of INR 740 crores for FY 14-15. Myntra is one of the leading fashion e-commerce portal in India and competes with the likes of Jabong, Fashion and You among others.

Financial Performance

Myntra is owned and operated by Myntra Designs Private Limited. The company reported a revenue growth of 78%, its revenue stood at INR 773 crores in FY 14-15 vis-à-vis INR 433 crores in FY 13-14.

The losses surged more than four folds from INR 173 crores in FY 13-14 to INR 740 crores in FY 14-15. In comparison, Jabong had reported a revenue of INR 1083 crores with a loss of INR 44 crores in the same period.

Myntra operates on an inventory-led model, and recognizes its revenue from the sale of goods through the website and the mobile app. It also realizes revenue from the technology solution services from operating the internet portal in the form of brand name license fees, technology license fees, domain name fees and service fees. Its revenue from operations was 96% of the total revenue.

The major expenses for the company as a percentage of the total expenses were purchase of stock-in-trade at 72%, Employee expense at 14% and advertising promotional expenses at 11%.

Interestingly, the employee expenses went up by 401% in the period. Following chart gives a break-up of the major expenses:

Funding

The company has raised a total funding of INR 1831 crores. However, the major funding came post acquisition when the company saw major investments from Flipkart of INR 1160 crores during June 2014 to June 2015.

About Myntra

Myntra was founded by Mukesh Bansal, Ashutosh Lawania and Vineet Saxena in 2007. It is an online e-commerce platform for fashion and lifestyle products including clothes, apparels and footwear and operates through an app-only model. Myntra, which specializes in fashion e-commerce, competes directly with Jabong, Yepme, Fashion and You and Limeroad in its category and indirectly with other E-commerce giants like Snapdeal and Amazon.

Myntra initially operated on a B2B model for on-demand personalization of gift items. In 2011 they shifted their focus on fashion and lifestyle products. In 2014, Myntra got acquired by Flipkart to keep players like Amazon and Snapdeal at bay. Founder and CEO, Mukesh Bansal, now heads Flipkart’s commerce platform and the ads business.

Myntra went app-only in May 2015but it seems that they have seen a decline in sales due to that. They recently announced that they clocked an annualized Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) of USD 800 million in January 2016 and are focusing on attaining positive gross profit and touching USD 1 Billion gross profit this year.

For Annual Reports, Balance Sheets, Profit & Loss, Company Research Reports, directors and other financial information on ALL Indian Companies, head over to www.tofler.in – Business Research Platform.

This article was originally published here by Team Tofler.

Author– Vishal, a Sci-fi enthusiast, engineer by mistake and writer by choice, combines his eye for numbers with a natural flair for storytelling to churn out Tofler’s blogs.

Editor –  Anchal, co-founder at Tofler, is a CA, CS and has more than 5 years experience in company analysis. She likes to explore and track companies, their performance and senior management.

Tofler makes no claim of ownership or affiliation with any trademark / logo (REGISTERED OR UNREGISTERED) used in this article. Trademarks or logos, if any, published on this page belong to their respective owners.

Snapdeal, the second largest player in the Indian e-commerce industry, has reported a revenue of INR 938 crores with a loss of INR 1,319 crores in FY 14-15. Snapdeal is fighting it out in the Indian e-commerce sector with home grown Flipkart, which is currently the leader, and US e-com giant Amazon who entered the India market in 2013.

FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE
Jasper Infotech Private Limited, which owns and operates Snapdeal, reported its revenue at INR 938 crores out of which INR 766 crores is the revenue from operations. This is a 450% growth in the revenue from INR 168 crores (INR 154 crores from operations) last fiscal. Loss reported against this revenue is a staggering INR 1319 crores which is roughly five times than that in the previous fiscal.

Compared to this, one of their competitors Shopclues, which recently entered the coveted Unicorn club, had reported a revenue of INR 79 crores with a loss of INR 101 crores in the same period.

As one would guess, their biggest expense in the fiscal was on Advertising and Promotional expenses at INR 1060 crores. Out of this, INR 426 crores was ‘Advertising and Publicity Expense’, while the remaining INR 633 crores was ‘Business Promotion Expenses’. ‘Business Promotion Expenses’ could possibly pertain to various discount schemes offered on Snapdeal. Their Employee Benefit expense grew four fold from INR 87 crores to INR 367 crores. Here is a breakup of their expenses in the previous two fiscals:

Growth Story
Snapdeal was founded by Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal in 2010 as a daily deals site but expanded to become an online marketplace in 2011. According to their website, they currently have more than 12 million products listed from 150,000 sellers and they deliver to more than 5000 cities in India.

Snapdeal holds a market share of 32% of the Indian e-commerce industry compared to two of its biggest rivals Flipkart, which holds 44% and Amazon, which accounts for 15% of the total market.

In April of 2015, Snapdeal acquired Freecharge, a digital payments company to bolster their presence in Mobile payments space. The deal was rumoured to be in the region of $450 million through a mix of cash and equity.

FUNDING
Jasper has raised a total funding of INR 10,492 crores so far, according the documents filed with the Registrar of Companies. Out of this, INR 3,187 crores has come in after 31^st March, 2015 and INR 6,181 crores came in FY 14-15. This two figures account for roughly 90% of their total funding received so far. Snapdeal counts Chinese eCommerce major Alibaba, OEM phone manufacturer Foxconn and Japanese investment bank SoftBank among its largest investors.

Recent developments

In order to increase their topline, Snapdeal has been dabbling in various offbeat categories with mixed success. Last year, Snapdeal became the first eCommerce site to start selling Luxury Yachts online. With the success in Automobiles category, they launched Snapdeal Motors, where visitors could book vehicles online from auto majors like Hero Motocorp, Mahindra and Mahindra, Suzuki Motorcycles and Datsun.

Snapdeal also had some good success in Home buying space. Snapdeal had held the Diwali Home Buying fest from November 3 to November 9 last year and approximately 10,000 customers showed interest and registered on the website to buy homes online.

And, it’s not just Homes and Autos – Snapdeal has been successful in selling Maggi packets as well (after the ban had lifted) – They reportedly sold over 7,20,000 packs of Maggi Noodles in just 5 minutes!

Snapdeal has been experimenting a lot over the last 12 to 18 months in their quest to become India’s biggest eCommerce portal.

For Annual Reports, Balance Sheets, Profit & Loss, Company Research Reports, directors and other financial information on ALL Indian Companies, head over to www.tofler.in – Business Research Platform.

This article was originally published here by Team Tofler.

Author– Vishal, a Sci-fi enthusiast, engineer by mistake and writer by choice, combines his eye for numbers with a natural flair for storytelling to churn out Tofler’s blogs.

Editor –  Anchal, co-founder at Tofler, is a CA, CS and has more than 5 years experience in company analysis. She likes to explore and track companies, their performance and senior management.

Tofler makes no claim of ownership or affiliation with any trademark / logo (REGISTERED OR UNREGISTERED) used in this article. Trademarks or logos, if any, published on this page belong to their respective owners.

Practo is a healthcare start-up, owned and operated by Practo Technologies Private Limited, which offers patients and doctors a unique platform to interact. It enables patients to search for doctors and book appointments and offers a practice management tool to the doctors. With over 15 lac monthly users and a global presence, Practo has disrupted the healthcare segment by offering an efficient way for doctors and patients to connect.

Financial Performance

Practo reported a 13X jump in its revenue in FY 14-15. Revenue stood at INR 29.7 crores, against a loss of INR 12.9 crores, but there is more to it.

Revenue

Practo Ray is the main offering by Practo. It is a Practice Management tool for the doctors that provides them access to a SaaS tool, enables anytime access to data, e-prescription, reports, analytics and more. The company obtains its revenue from the subscription that it offers to the doctors. This revenue amounted to INR 6.1 crores in FY 14-15 (INR 2.2 crores in FY 13-14).

Out of a total reported ‘Revenue from operations’ of INR 25.4 crores, INR 19.3 crores (~76%) has been reported as ‘Software development and support’ and ‘customer support and marketing services’ that it rendered to its holding company, Practo Pte. Ltd., incorporated in Singapore in November 2012. Another INR 3.9 crores (13% of total revenue) has been reported, under the ‘Other Income’ head, as the ‘sale of Intellectual Properties’ (including its products Practo Ray, Hello, Search, Tablet, website, domain name, all the codes and the Trademarks held) to Practo Pte. Ltd. These three heads combined, have led to a seemingly exaggerated revenue figure in FY 14-15. Here is a breakup of their revenue in the past two years:

In lieu of this understanding between Practo India and Practo Pte, the former will now be paying subscription charges to the latter. As mentioned in the notes to the financial statement, “On 27 August 2014, the Company has entered into an agreement with its Holding Company for the use of its Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) by paying subscription charges which is based on a percentage of revenue generated by the Company. However, the Holding Company has waived the subscription charges for the period from 27 August 2015 till March 2015”. Here, Practo India is being referred to as ‘The Company’ and Practo Pte is being referred to as ‘Holding Company and there seems to be a typo in the last sentence where August 2014 is written as August 2015.

Expenses

Apart from the Employee expenses that stood at 62% of the total expenses, the major expense was Advertising promotional expense at INR 4.4 crore. Notably, it had spent only INR 83 thousand on advertising in the previous fiscal. Here is a breakup of their expenses:

Funding and Growth

Back in 2008 when Shashank ND and Abhinav Lal founded Practo, they started its operations in Bengaluru. Over a span of 7 years, Practo has entered 15 countries across the globe. Recently it started operations in Kula Lumpur in October last year. The company claims to have more than 1.3 lac doctors on its platforms and more than 4 million monthly searches. They went on an acquisition spree this year, making four acquisitions in a span of five months – Fitho Wellness (fitness and preventive healthcare), Genii (a tech products development firm), Insta Health (hospital information management solution provider) and Qikwell (doctor appointment booking platform).

The company has raised a total funding of INR 298 crores so far. Out of this, about INR 11 crores came from Sequoia Capital during March 2011 to October 2012. Rest of the amount – INR 286.4 crores – has been routed through their holding company Practo Pte. Last fund of INR 164 crores was infused in September 2015.

In a crowded space of healthcare platforms, where a few like HelpingDoc have shut down and others like Fitho and Quikwell have gotten acquired, Practo competes closely with Lybrate. So far, it seems to be emerging as a clear leader in this space. In a latest bid, it partnered with Uber, to enable patients to book a cab through Practo app. Recently, it has also entered the beauty and wellness segment by bringing spas, salons and fitness centres on its platform.

For Annual Reports, Balance Sheets, Profit & Loss, Company Research Reports, directors and other financial information on ALL Indian Companies, head over to www.tofler.in – Business Research Platform.

This article was originally published here by Team Tofler.

Author– Vishal, a Sci-fi enthusiast, engineer by mistake and writer by choice, combines his eye for numbers with a natural flair for storytelling to churn out Tofler’s blogs.

Editor –  Anchal, co-founder at Tofler, is a CA, CS and has more than 5 years experience in company analysis. She likes to explore and track companies, their performance and senior management.

Tofler makes no claim of ownership or affiliation with any trademark / logo (REGISTERED OR UNREGISTERED) used in this article. Trademarks or logos, if any, published on this page belong to their respective owners.

Urban Ladder Home Décor Solutions Pvt. Ltd., which owns and operates Urban Ladder, has reported its latest revenue figures. Urban Ladder’s operating revenue grew from INR 11 crores in FY 13-14 to INR 13 crores in FY 14-15, while the losses surged from INR 7.6 crores to INR 58.5 crores in the same period.

Financial Performance

Urban Ladder’s total revenue stood at INR 19.2 crores – INR 12.98 Cr from operations and INR 6.23 other income – in FY 14-15 compared to INR 11.9 crores (INR 11 Cr from operations) in the previous fiscal.

Looking at their P&L, it appears that they have shifted from an inventory led model to a marketplace model during FY 13-14 to 14-15. Revenue from ‘Sale of furniture’, which contributed 74% of their revenue from operations in previous fiscal, was nil in this one.

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Total revenue from operations grew by only 18% this fiscal. A total ‘Other Income’ of INR 6.2 crores, was mainly comprised of the ‘interest income and income from sale of current investments’. The book value of the current investments stood at INR 300 crores as on 31^st March, 2015. Following chart depicts their year on year revenue and PAT.

The loss for the company grew to INR 58.5 crores in FY 14-15 as against INR 7.6 crores in FY13-14. While the revenue grew only marginally this fiscal, certain expenses saw a tremendous increase – Advertising and Marketing expenses (grew by a whopping ten times) and Employee expenses (almost quadrupled) – thus increasing Urban Ladder’s losses many folds. There was also a spurt in the Courier and Delivery Charges (from INR 81 lacs to INR 4.9 crores) and Labour Charges (from INR 58 lacs to INR 3.9 crores). The company provides free home delivery of furniture and free installation.

About Urban Ladder

Urban Ladder was co-founded by Ashish Goel and Rajiv Srivatsa in 2012. It provides an online marketplace for furniture and home décor and operates across 30 cities in India. It provides the service through the website as well as 3 different mobile apps. Its major competitors include Goldman Sachs backed Pepperfry and Rocket Internet backed FabFurnish. As per the documents available with the Registrar of Companies, so far it has raised around INR 460 crores from multiple investors including Kalaari Capital, Sequoia Capital, SAIF Partners, Steadview Capital, Anand and Venky LLC, Ratan Tata and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) among others.

Urban Ladder was one of the early entrants in the online furniture retail space, which used to be a niche till a few years back. With a strong focus on quality, they are trying to build their USP on high end designs and great customer experience. With several established players and many more new ones coming in this space, battle is only going to get more intense.

This article was originally published here by Team Tofler.

Author– Vishal, a Sci-fi enthusiast, engineer by mistake and writer by choice, combines his eye for numbers with a natural flair for storytelling to churn out Tofler’s blogs.

Editor –  Anchal, founder at Tofler, is a CA, CS and has more than 5 years experience in company analysis. She likes to explore and track companies, their performance and senior management.

A.M. Marketplaces Private Limited which owns and operates Limeroad, the social discovery e-commerce platform for women, has reported its latest revenue figures. The company earned revenue of INR 15.6 crores in FY 14-15 compared to INR 2.6 crores in FY 13-14. However, the company’s losses more than doubled to INR 32.5 crore from INR 14.3 crore in the previous fiscal.

Financial Performance

The revenue from operations grew from INR 1.8 crores in FY 14 to INR 9.3 crores in FY 15. This (60% of total revenue) is comprised of ‘Commission Income’ (55%), ‘Shipping Charges’ (3%) and ‘Collection Charges’ (1%). Other Income (Income from Interest on Bank Deposits) contributed 40% to the total revenue at INR 6.3 crores.

The expenses stood at INR 48 crores. The biggest expense was the Advertisement and Sales Promotion expense at INR 18.2 crores, 38% of the total expenses. The following is a breakup of the expenses:

About Limeroad

Limeroad is a unique ecommerce platform that allows its users (women) to create and share different looks apart from shopping on the website as well. Ankush Mehra, Suchi Mukherjee and Prashant Malik, the founders came up with this unique proposition for women through a ‘social ecommerce platform’, where they can create a unique look, from a range of products available on the app, on a virtual scrapbook and share and sell the look as well. The range includes clothing, accessories, footwear, bags and home and décor products from various brands and SME vendors.

The company has raised a total of INR 298 crores (~$50 million) in three rounds of funding from Tiger Global, Lightspeed Venture and Matrix Partners.

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Although not a direct competitor, Jabong and Myntra are key players among lifestyle e-tailers in India. Roposo and Zivame can be considered among direct competition of Limeroad. Limeroad has approached fashion e-commerce with a novel approach. With consumers facing a problem of plenty, for every such platform, engaging their users is the key and Limeroad seems to be doing that well.

This article was originally published here by Team Tofler.

Author– Vishal, a Sci-fi enthusiast, engineer by mistake and writer by choice, combines his eye for numbers with a natural flair for storytelling to churn out Tofler’s blogs.

Editor –  Anchal, founder at Tofler, is a CA, CS and has more than 5 years experience in company analysis. She likes to explore and track companies, their performance and senior management.

TV18 Home Shopping Network Limited, which owns and operates HomeShop18 has reported its latest revenue figures for FY 14-15. Total revenue figure stood at INR 450 crores compared to INR 368 crores in previous fiscal, registering a growth of 22%. The loss figures doubled from INR 84 crores in FY 13-14 to INR 175 crores FY 14-15.

Financial Performance

The revenue from operations stood at INR 444 crores which grew by 23% over the previous year. This is comprised of ‘Commission on sale of products’ (98%), ‘Reimbursement of freight and collection expenses’ (1%) and ‘Sponsorship income’ (1%).

The company’s expenses increased from INR 452 crores to INR 619 crores. The breakup of the expenses is as follows:

About HomeShop 18

HomeShop 18 is among the leading digital commerce platforms in the country. It has presence across TV, web and mobile. However, the TV channel contributed 99% to the company’s revenues in FY14-15. The company offers digital, clothing, lifestyle and appliances from over 1500 brands in the country and operates on a marketplace model. As per its Directors Report – The Company has a combined reach of around 250 million consumers and has placed over 33 million orders in the last seven years. They also claim to be one of the largest marketing & distribution platform for mobiles and digital cameras in the country.

How does HomeShop 18 fare compared to its peers

The biggest player in this segment is Shop CJ Alive (backed by Star India), followed by HomeShop 18 (backed by Network 18) and Naaptol, which initially started as an e-commerce platform. Combined together they hold 85% share of the television home shopping market. The following chart summarizes their past two years’ turnover figures:

Though HomeShop 18 was the first entrant among the three in 2006, its operations started in 2008 only. Naaptol (2008) and Shop CJ (2008) came around later. Other new entrants in the segment include Best Deal TV and Den Snapdeal TV.

Although the number of internet users in India is on the rise, TV still has the largest viewership and maximum reach as far as households are concerned. This fact has led a number of players to enter into the TV Home Shopping segment. In fact, Snapdeal partnered with Den to launch Den Snapdeal TV in September last year, and it is among the bigger TV shopping portals in India.

This article was originally published here by Team Tofler.

Author– Vishal, a Sci-fi enthusiast, engineer by mistake and writer by choice, combines his eye for numbers with a natural flair for storytelling to churn out Tofler’s blogs.

Editor –  Anchal, founder at Tofler, is a CA, CS and has more than 5 years experience in company analysis. She likes to explore and track companies, their performance and senior management.

Jabong, the online fashion e-tailer, earned a revenue of INR 1083 crores in FY 14-15, double of that in previous year. The loss figures stood at 4% of the total revenue at INR 44 crores.

Financial Performance

The company has registered triple digit growth since inception. In the financial year ending March this year, Jabong reported a revenue of INR 1083 crores, which is a growth of 105% over the previous year figure of INR 527 crores. The company is yet to break even and made a loss of INR 44 crores in the period as compared to INR 17 crores in previous fiscal.

About Jabong

Xerion Retail Private Limited operates the e-retail platform jabong.com for trading of lifestyle products like apparels, footwear, jewelry and accessories. Co-founded by Arun Chandra Mohan, Lakshmi Potluri and Praveen Sinha in 2011, Jabong has been among the leading fashion and lifestyle platforms in the country. It offers more than 2000 brands including Adidas, American Tourister, Gucci, Lee Cooper, Reebok, Van Heusen, UCB, etc. The company operates on an inventory-led model.

Jabong is a Global Fashion Group company, which operates fashion ecommerce companies across 27 countries. Jabong also offers Indian ethnic apparels across the globe through its international arm jabongworld.com.

Revenue Model

The company operates on an inventory-led model and around 98% of the revenue comes from the sale of the goods, the goods being the finished products that it keeps as inventory. In effect, the major expense for the company is the ‘Purchase of goods’ which stood at INR 837 crores. The other major expense was the logistics expense which stood at INR 161 crores. It does not charge any shipping fee from the customers. The discounting charges were INR 6.3 crores. The following chart gives a break-up of the expenses.

While Flipkart and Snapdeal have been offering lifestyle products to their customers since their early days, Amazon also started offering lifestyle products this year. Myntra, its largest competitor, was acquired by Flipkart in May 2014. Its other competitors include Yepme, Yebhi, Koovs, Fashion and You among others.

Jabong had been at par in sales with Myntra till the time Myntra got acquired, but has been losing the market share ever since. There were talks of Jabong’s acquisition by Paytm this September following the exit of founding team. It was reported at the time that Jabong was being valued at somewhere between $500 million and $800 million. It appears that the acquisition did not go through, instead, there were plans to overhaul the senior management.

This article was originally published here by Team Tofler.

Author– Vishal, a Sci-fi enthusiast, engineer by mistake and writer by choice, combines his eye for numbers with natural flair for storytelling to churn out Tofler’s blogs.

Editor –  Anchal, founder at Tofler, is a CA, CS and has more than 5 years experience in company analysis. She likes to explore and track companies, their performance and senior management.

Locodel Solutions Private Limited which owns and operates the app only hyper local delivery service, Grofers has reported its annual returns with the Registrar of Companies for the financial year 2014-15. The company reported revenue of INR 86 lacs at a loss of INR 3.9 crores in the year.

About Grofers

Grofers was founded in 2013 by Saurabh Kumar and Albinder Dhindsa. It offers a wide range of products for instant delivery through its mobile app. According to Grofers’ website, it offers more than 1,20,000 products across various categories including fresh produce, grocery, bakery, cosmetics, household and recently electronic goods as well. The app provides the users the choice to order goods from nearby local stores and get those delivered within 90 minutes of placing the order. It is present across 26 cities in India.

Grofers is in its third year of operations. The company had initially started as a B2B service and later switched to the hyperlocal B2C model. It had launched its mobile app last year in December for customers use.

Financial Performance of Grofers

The company reported a revenue of INR 86 lacs in FY14-15 compared to INR 1.8 lacs in FY13-14. Out of INR 86 lacs, INR 73 lacs was revenue from operations. The company realizes its revenue from the commission on sale of products and reimbursement of freight and collection expenses from the vendors.

The company made a loss of INR 3.9 crores in FY14-15 compared to a loss of INR 2.8 lacs the previous fiscal. Largest expense head was ‘Employee Expenses’ at INR 2.2 crores, followed by ‘Manpower Supply charges’ at INR 61 lacs and ‘Advertising Promotional Expense at INR 60 lacs’.

According to Grofers’ website, their mobile app has 1.6 million downloads and it took only 10 days for Grofers to spread across 17 cities in the country. Evidently, the company has been on a major expansion spree in the past few months. This has been fueled by 3 rounds of funding received from Sequoia and Tiger Global. As per the documents filed with the Registrar of Companies, it had raised INR 305 crores (~$50 million) till August this year. It was widely reported in the news that Grofers had raised another $120 million in November 2015, from a group of investors led by Softbank, but they have not filed any documents for the same.

The other major players in the hyperlocal groceries delivery include BigBasket (operational in 13 cities) and Peppertap (operational in 19 cities). There are currently more than 20 startups operating across India in this space after a few of them shut shops this year.

Recently, major e-commerce players have jumped in to get a share of the hyperlocal pie as well. Flipkart Nearby and Amazon Kirana are operational in Bangaluru and are offering groceries at customer’s doorsteps. Ola also launched their Ola Store to provide instant delivery of groceries. Hyperlocal seems to be the buzzword and early entrants (and heavily funded) players like Grofers seem to be at the forefront in this space. As the segment matures and looks to consolidate, few big acquisitions may be on the cards. For now, they have made lives easier for a large number of people.

This article was originally published here by Team Tofler.

Author– Vishal, a Sci-fi enthusiast, engineer by mistake and writer by choice, combines his eye for numbers with natural flair for storytelling to churn out Tofler’s blogs.

Editor –  Anchal, founder at Tofler, is a CA, CS and has more than 5 years experience in company analysis. She likes to explore and track companies, their performance and senior management.

Astronomical growth in the e-commerce sector in India in the past 5 years or so, has led to the birth and steep rise of ‘e-commerce focused logistics’ segment. Companies in this segment are attracting tremendous investor attention. The e-commerce industry in India is poised to grow further and penetrate deeper into Tier-II and Tier-III cities, which will definitely pave a path of high growth for the ‘e-commerce focused logistics’ segment.

Ecom Express is one of the key players in this segment. Ecom Express Private Limited, which owns and operates Ecom Express, is a logistics solution provider which caters solely to e-commerce logistics. It was co-founded by T. A. Krishnan, Sanjeev Saxena, K. Satyanarayana and Manju Dhawan in 2012. The company specializes in pre-paid, cash on delivery, cash before delivery, dropship and reverse logistics services. It also provides value added services like same day delivery, special delivery location, Sunday pickup/delivery service to its customers. The major e-sellers using its platform include Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal and Myntra.

Ecom Express Financials

In just a span of three years, Ecom Express’ revenue figures have grown 200 times from INR 73 lacs in FY 12-13 to INR 151 crores in FY 14-15 (refer to the chart below). However, it has reported a loss of INR 49 crores in FY 14-15.

Company’s expenses seem to be split across two major heads – Employee expenses and Cost of freight. While employee expenses almost quadrupled from the previous fiscal, cost of freight became five times.

Ecom’s major competitors include Delhivery, GoJavas, DotZot, among others. As per various news articles, Delhivery, based in Gurgaon, had raised Series D funding of $85 million from Tiger Global Management, this year and GoJavas raised $20 million from Snapdeal in October. As per the documents obtained from the Registrar of Companies, Ecom Express had raised INR 280 crores (nearly $45 million) in June this year from Warburg Pincus (a much higher number was floating around in news article). They had raised an earlier round of INR 80 crores from Peepul Capital in August, 2014. The company aims to use these funds to expand to 450 cities across India by March 2016.

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The e-commerce industry in India is still in its initial phase with major players like Amazon and Flipkart registering double digit growth year-on-year. Logistics, being an allied industry, is also expected to grow in tandem, in coming years. In turn, these players will also determine the success of e-commerce players by coming up with innovative solutions to cater to Tier-II and III cities.

This article was originally published here by Team Tofler.

Author– Vishal, a Sci-fi enthusiast, engineer by mistake and writer by choice, combines his eye for numbers with natural flair for storytelling to churn out Tofler’s blogs.

Editor –  Anchal, founder at Tofler, is a CA, CS and has more than 5 years experience in company analysis. She likes to explore and track companies, their performance and senior management.