‘Know your customer’. It is one mantra that we hear repeatedly for successful sales closings. No secret about it. But what and how? We have enumerated 3 essential things that should be checked to prepare for a sales meeting. The sources to find such information are also discussed below. The level of preparation required ofcourse depends on the size of the transaction and the nature of the product.

1. What does the company do? – This sounds obvious but many times salespeople have no idea! Just take a minute to google about the company and its website to check what it does and identify its industry. Is anyone in that industry using your product/service already? It could help you carry the conversation in the meeting and speak suitably about your product.
2. Who is the decision-maker? – Are you meeting a decision-maker? This is easier to find out in smaller companies than for bigger companies. For SMEs, you can study the free ownership structure on Tofler.in (at the company network tab). It’s important because you are likely to run into owners/directors in meetings with SMEs. They are the decision-makers. Knowing a bit about them could go a long way. For large companies, LinkedIn could help in figuring the organization hierarchy. If not, then at least it would tell you a bit about the person you are meeting, his background, work history, and interests.
3. Financial performance of the company – There are two questions here: why and how? Why? – because it would set the tone in your mind for the conversation. How much you can ask for your goods and services? How aggressively you should pitch? How much you should negotiate? You can only understand this when you know if the client could pay well or not. Some answers you should look for:
   1. How big is the company? Is revenue growing or declining?
   2. Is the company in profits and losses? What are the margins like?
   3. Which are the major expense heads of the company? Would your product impact any head significantly?
      Now the next question – How? Due diligence companies and MCA provide this information. You can also check Tofler.in which provides a lot of this information for free on its website.

Lending has been a way of life in India. It is routine for us to lend money to businesses run by our relatives, friends or their friends. However, many of us have also been burnt in the process. Whether you would like to lend again or not is your call. But if you do, a little research about the borrower can ensure better safety of your funds. Here are three essential things you should look at before lending. None of these require you to ask any details from the business itself:

1. Financial strength: The financial health of the company over the last 3-5 years
2. Leverage: Existing debt burden on the company
3. Existing industry conditions: The health of the overall industry and its main players

In this part (1) of the article, we will discuss assessing the financial strength.  Assessing the financials of a company is a nuanced field. These are a few things you can begin with:

• Operating revenues: Check if the operating revenues have grown or declined over the last 3 years? Growing revenues is definitely a comfort but do compare them with days receivables outstanding (DRO). DRO indicates the number of days for which the payment against sales is yet to be received. For example, if an SME has days receivables outstanding of 45 days, it means it is yet to receive payment against its 45 days worth of sales. So, if sales are increasing and so is DRO, then it raises suspicion on the quality of sales. Perhaps, they are low-quality sales made in desperation and payment is yet to be received (or might not be received). Or they could be a case of fake billing to inflate revenues to show a better picture to lenders and customers. The point being, DRO shouldn’t be increasing over time. On the other hand, declining revenues is obviously a sign of caution.
• Profit margins: Look at gross (sales – the cost of goods) and net (sales – all expenses and taxes) profit margins. Are they narrowing, stable or growing? Growing and stable margins is a comfort, however, do check days receivables outstanding. Narrowing margins need a little more research. Try to ascertain the reason for reducing margins by studying the expenses that have increased. You should also look at similar companies in the industry to check if it’s a company-specific concern or industry-wide concern. Any way, narrowing profit margins is a sign of caution.
• Major assets: Check the major assets owned by the company in its ‘fixed assets’ schedule provided in its balance sheet. Are these lands, buildings or plant and machinery for the operations? They should relate to the nature and size of the business. Compare them with other similar companies in the same industry to get an idea. This will give an idea of how efficiently is a company using its funds.

From where do you get the above details?
The financial filings of a ‘company’ can be sourced from the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. You can also source such filings and reports with important financial numbers like revenues, profits, ratios over the last 5 years from tofler.in. However, if it’s a partnership or individual business, then getting such details is almost not possible.

1. Background check of the founders: Evaluate the experience and educational background of the founders and the core team. Try to get references if you can. Do they have any experience in the problem they are aiming to solve? How much fieldwork they have put into the problem and how much research has been done in finding the solution? And foremost, are the people of character and integrity?
2. Check financials: For early-stage startups, financials would not be available but for others, it is crucial to understand their financials. Even if there are no revenues yet, you may like to get a sense of where is expenditure being done? Does it resonate with their story?
3. Other recent funding rounds and valuation: Check any recent funding rounds in the startup. Please use the funding documents filed with regulatory authorities to evaluate their recent funding rounds and the valuations claimed therein. The startup itself should be able to share those documents or you may get them from MCA or Tofler.
4. Other investors and their other investees: You may want to meet the existing investors or check out other companies in which they are already invested. You can do this for free with the ‘company network’ feature at Tofler. This will give a sense of their investing style and you can evaluate whether it resonates with yours.

I recently came across this term ‘Shinese’ – a word used to refer to long-lasting companies. Interestingly, about 90% of all businesses worldwide that are more than 100 years old are Japanese. They all have fewer than 300 employees. They are also all family-owned businesses. We then studied the research done on these companies to find out what makes them stick longer. Here are some reasons we found that you could also apply to your business:

• Chasing growth cautiously: These businesses keep tight control of their costs and would make the decision to spend only when it is necessary and possible benefits have been thought through. Besides, they rarely borrow to expand and focus on operating cash flows. They believe that growth should be chased only when it can be done comfortably with internal accruals and cash flows. This is, of course, something that young entrepreneurs and startups might not appreciate but the family-owned businesses that are already established would.
• Continuous improvement in the product: These businesses have continuously improved their products or services, while also evolving them with the change in technology and consumer needs. Some of them like bakeries, restaurants focus on conserving the traditions to create their own niche.
• Building a lasting relationship with customers: They put effort into building a long-lasting relationship with the customers. This is their constant focus.
• They are seudo-professionally managed: This is quite interesting! Typically, Japanese business owners bequeath entire companies to their eldest sons. But if business owners don’t trust their sons to lead the company, then they can legally adopt a ‘son’ (often marries into the family) and he goes on to run the business. This is very different from how businesses are succeeded in India, but perhaps Indian business owners can think of other creative and workable ways to ensure that businesses are run by able people.

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.

‘Know your customer’. It is one mantra that we hear repeatedly for successful sales closings. No secret about it. But what and how? We have enumerated 3 essential things that should be checked to prepare for a sales meeting. The sources to find such information are also discussed below. The level of preparation required ofcourse depends on size of the transaction and nature of product.

1. What does the company do? – This sounds obvious but many times salespeople have no idea! Just take a minute to google about the company and its website to check what it does and identify its industry. Is anyone in that industry using your product/service already? It could help you carry the conversation in the meeting and speak suitably about your product.
2. Who is the decision maker? – Are you meeting a decision maker? This is easier to find out in smaller companies than for bigger companies. For SMEs, you can study the free ownership structure on Tofler.in (at company network tab). Its important because you are likely to run into owners/directors in meetings with SMEs. They are the decision makers. Knowing a bit about them could go a long way. For large companies, LinkedIn could help in figuring the organization hierarchy. If not, then atleast it would tell you a bit about the person you are meeting, his background, work history and interests.
3. Financial performance of the company – There are two questions here: why and how? Why? – because it would set the tone in your mind for the conversation. How much you can ask for your goods and services? How aggressively you should pitch? How much you should negotiate? You can only understand this when you know if the client could pay well or not. Some answers you should look for:
   1. How big is the company? Is the revenue growing or declining?
   2. Is the company in profits and losses? What are the margins like?
   3. Which are the major expense heads of the company? Would your product impact any head significantly?
      Now the next question – How? Due diligence companies and MCA provide this information. You can also check Tofler.in which provides a lot of this information for free on its website.

In a country obsessed with cricket, Indian Premier League, IPL has managed to offer the perfect mix of cricket and entertainment. It is among the top 50 sports league across the globe in terms of revenue and the 6^th most watched sports league globally. Needless to say it has become a great money making proposition for the BCCI and the participating franchisees. But how much money does IPL make? In this article we look at the richest cricket league in the  .

About IPL financial performance

As per the latest available financials published by the BCCI, [tweetability]the seventh season of the IPL held in April- May 2014 generated income of INR 999.6 crores for the BCCI[/tweetability] as against INR 1194.7 crores the previous year. In the same period, the surplus from IPL stood at INR 127 crores. Indeed the BCCI has recorded significant revenue jump since the inception of the IPL.

The first season of IPL held in April- May 2008, generated a surplus of INR 15 crores for the BCCI. The second season that was shifted to South Africa resulted in a deficit of INR 42 crores. But since the third season held in 2010, the IPL has consistently generated surplus in north of INR 100 crores. In fact the surplus alone stood at INR 335 crores for the 6^th season of the IPL.

The IPL Teams

The current version of the IPL has 8 participating teams, 2 of which- Gujarat Lions and Rising Pune Suprgiants played their first season in the IPL. Of the remaining teams, Sunrisers Hyderabad have played in 3 previous seasons, while the other 5 teams have been part of the league since inception. Following is the list of teams in the current IPL and their respective owners:

How the teams make money

[tweetability]The majority of the revenue comes in the form of central rights– the share in the IPL revenue- that the BCCI pays to the teams[/tweetability]. Apart from this, teams also have sponsorship income on completion of the terms of the sponsorship agreements which is based upon contractual amounts previously established with sponsors. Income from the sale of tickets are also reported on the income statement of the companies. Other sources include income from trading players with the other franchises and merchandise sales. The winning teams also realize revenue from the prize money from winning the IPL. [tweetability]KKR which won the IPL 7 took home INR 39 crores as the prize money[/tweetability].

IPL for the franchises

A look at the financial performance of the teams would show that IPL has turned out to be a fruitful venture for them. The consistent teams of the IPL have been raking in the moolah for the promoters. The infographic captures their financial performance. Interestingly, only KKR and KXIP were in the green as far as profits were concerned in FY 2014-15.

The team which has consistently been able to generate profits for the franchisee has been KKR. KKR’s revenues showed an impressive jump to INR 169 crore for the year ending March 2015 against INR 129 crore the year before. [tweetability]While KKR is the most profitable among all the cricket franchisees, it has also managed to keep the company in the green over the last four years[/tweetability]. KKR might have benefited time and again due to its association with Bollywwod stars like Shahrukh Khan and Juhi Chawla. The six-week tournament that ended in May 2014 had seen KKR emerge as the champions for the second time. KKR has a following of 14.3 million on Facebook.

RCB on the other hand have had a rough ride in the IPL. The star studded team has not managed to generate big bucks for the franchisee. The income remained flat around the INR 90 crores mark.  [tweetability]RCB reported revenue of INR 94 crores in FY 2014-15[/tweetability] against INR 93 crores in the previous fiscal. Their losses soared to INR 30 crores in the same period. The biggest expense for the team was the player fees, which was INR 67 crores in the period.

Delhi Daredevils also saw their revenue decline after they finished at the bottom in IPL 2014. Their revenue fell from INR 159 crores in FY 2013-14 to INR 117 crores in FY 2014-15. The company also reported a loss of INR 20 crores in the period after being in the green the previous year. The profit in FY 2013-14 stood at INR 7 crores. Incidentally, in 2013 also DD were at the bottom of the points table.

While not all the franchisees have been able to become profitable, there is no doubt on the money making ability of the IPL. Add to that the fact that IPL also goes beyond revenue for the promoters. [tweetability]The right to operate the franchises provides them with a platform to build corporate and brand image as a pan India company[/tweetability].

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.

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

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.

Carzonrent, which owns and operates radio taxi service Easy Cabs, has reported revenue of INR 263 crores in FY 14-15. Easy Cabs which operates in Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai, contributed 19% to the company’s revenue. Interestingly, the company made INR 175 crores from renting cars alone.

Financial Performance of Carzonrent

The company reported revenue of INR 263 crores in FY 14-15, a decline of 11% over the previous year’s INR 295 crores. This decline is however, due to the company selling off its Operating Lease segment for INR 80 crores. This also resulted in the company’s profits jumping from INR 6 crores in FY14 to INR 58 crores in FY15.

67% of the revenue came from the car rental services and 19% from taxi services. Following is a break-up of the revenue from operations:

The expenses for the company stood at INR 271 crores, which mainly consisted of the ‘Vehicle running expenses’ at INR 117 crores and employee expenses at INR 27 crores.

About Carzonrent

Carzonrent operates car rental, self-drive (“Myles”) and radio taxi (“Easy Cabs”) services across India. Starting out in 2000, it is among the oldest players and the market leaders in the segment. The company started with car leasing and entered into taxi segment with Easy Cabs in 2006 and self-driven segment in 2014 with Myles. It has its own dedicated fleet of 6500 cars to provide the services. It has raised INR 55 crores from Sequoia (in 2006) and BTS India (in 2011).

Other players in the car rental segment include Zoomcar, JustRide, Savaari among other smaller players and the unorganized operators as well. In the taxi segment it faces stiff competition from the heavily funded players like Ola, Uber and Meru Cabs for a share of the INR 50,000 crore industry.

What distinguishes Carzonrent from its peers is its strengths in terms of corporate and retail customer base, airport presence, partnerships with airlines and hotels, chauffeur drive and self-drive services, own dedicated fleet of cars, visible and recognized brands and  innovative technology platforms.

The ground transportation industry has been attracting big players with heavily-funded pockets. Carzonrent has bet big on its self-drive/ car sharing service “Myles”, and plans to expand the operations to 100 cities across India with a fleet of 5000 cars. It also acquired Bangalore based ride sharing startup Ridingo in April 2015.

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.

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.

Naaptol saw a 2.3 times rise in its revenue for the FY 14-15 as its revenue grew to INR 289 crores. The company is currently the third largest player in the digital commerce platform market with presence across TV, web and mobile.

Financial Performance of Naaptol

Naaptol reported a revenue of INR 289 crores against a loss of INR 43 crores. Last year’s revenue and PAT figures stood at INR 128 crores and INR 57 crores, respectively. This was revenue growth of 125% in the period.

Two largest expenses for the company were media and logistics expenses. The media expenses for the company stood at INR 148 crores while logistics expenses at INR 103 crores. Here is a breakup of the major expenses:

About Naaptol

Naaptol is owned and operated by Naaptol Online Shopping Pvt. Ltd. Founded by Manu Agarwal in 2008, it is a comparison based social shopping portal and is available through website, mobile app and TV channel Naaptol Blue. It competes in its segment with players like Shop CJ Live, Homeshop 18, DEN-Snapdeal TVShop among others. While Naaptol Blue is a Hindi language channel, it also has vernacular presence with separate channels in Tamil, Malyalam, Telugu and Kannada. Over the years the company has transformed from a price comparison site to be present across multiple channels.

The company has secured a total funding of INR 665 crores from various investors including Mitsui & Co., NEA FVCI Ltd.  and Canaan Partners. The latest round of funding was secured in October 2015 for INR 343 crores from Mitsui & Co.

The company competes closely with veteran players like Homeshop 18 and Shop CJ Alive, which have been operational for 10 and 8 years, respectively and new players like DEN-Snapdeal TV Shop (incorporated in February 2014) and Best Deal TV (incorporated in December 2014). Compared to Naaptol, FY 14-15 revenue figures for Homeshop 18 and Shop CJ Alive stood at INR 444 crores and INR 561 crores, respectively. The three companies hold a market share of about 85% in TV home shopping market.

In the Indian context, though internet penetration is increasing rapidly, TV as a medium still has a wider reach across India. According to Broadcast Audience Research Council, the estimated television audience stands at 153 million homes. The TV shopping market is mainly driven by the housewives. The industry is expected to reach INR 50,000 crores by 2020 and has attracted players like Snapdeal to have their presence in the medium.

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.

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.

Yatra.com, one of India’s leading Online Travel Agencies, reported a 40% rise in its revenue figures in FY 14-15. Its revenue stood at INR 263 crores.

*since October, 2010.

About Yatra.com

Yatra.com is owned and operated by Yatra Online Private Limited. Founded in 2006, it is an online consolidator of travel products including flights, hotel, trains, buses and cruises as well as holiday and trade fair packages. The company claims to have more than 50,176 hotels in India and over 500,000 hotels around the world. It also boasts of doing 20,000 domestic tickets and 7500 hotels and holiday packages a day. Yatra.com provides its services through website, mobile WAP site and mobile applications, 24×7 multi-lingual call centre, a countrywide network of Holiday Lounges and Yatra Travel Express stores. Yatra.com competes aggressively with MakeMyTrip, GoIbibo, Cleartrip, Expedia, Musafir.com in the OTA industry.

Financial Performance of Yatra.com

Yatra.com reported revenue of INR 263 crores against a loss of INR 67 crores in FY 14-15. The revenue and loss figures for the previous fiscal were INR 190 crores and INR 40 crores, respectively. This is a 67% increase in the loss figure over the previous fiscal and the company is yet to break even.

In comparison, its competitors Cleartrip and Ibibo had reported a revenue of INR 192 crores and INR 234 crores in the same period.

The Company provides travel products and services to leisure and corporate travelers in India and abroad. Other revenue primarily consists of advertising revenue, income from sale of rail and bus tickets and fees for facilitating website access to a travel insurance company. Two-thirds of the revenue comes from the flight booking services. The hotel and packages saw a 64% increase over the previous fiscal. Following is a break-up of the revenue in FY 14-15:

The biggest expense for the company was the advertising and promotional expense which stood at INR 140 crores (40% of the total expenses). The following is a break-up of the major expenses:

Funding

The company has raised funding of INR 520 crores since October 2010. The list of investors includes Reliance, Asia Consolidated DMC, IL&FS among others. Out of this, INR 122 crores were raised in FY 15-16.

Benchmarking

Here is how Yatra fares in comparison to the major players in OTA industry. The FY 14-15 figures for MakeMyTrip are currently unavailable but it was the market leader in FY 13-14 with a revenue of INR 1340 crores.

Among its key acquisitions are ticket consolidator Travel Services International (TSI) in October 2010, global distribution system (GDS) provider MagicRooms.in, and Indian events and entertainment portal BuzzInTown.com in July 2012. Recently, it acqui-hired Travel-logs, in January this year, to boost tours within city. It also acquired 100% stake in Travelguru.com in 2012.

Recently the company launched TG Rooms to take on the likes of OYO and Zo rooms in the budget rooms segment, and claims to have the largest inventory of hotels and accommodations in India with over 40,000 stay options across over 1100 cities.

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.