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ShopClues

Despite drop in daily orders, Shopclues claims to reach break-even this holiday season

ShopClues

E-commerce marketplace Shopclues, discarding the fact that it’s going through tough time, has claimed to be on the right path and also raised about $16 million from existing investors this year.

The company last raised $7.5 million in debt in May 2017. It has not been able to raise any big round since January 2016, when it raised over $100 million from GIC and existing investors Tiger Global and Nexus Ventures and joined the unicorn club.

The company on Thursday broke its silence in a blog post and said that it expects to reach break-even during this holiday season. 

The company’s CEO Sanjay Sethi wrote an email to the employees and assured them of the platform’s robust growth. In the email, he said that the company’s burn had come down from $5.5 million in January last year to less than half a million dollars a month at present.

Shopclues’ response came a few days after Entrackr reported that it is planning to pivot its business and do mass layoffs. Last month, it was reportedly in talks with eBay and Japanese Internet conglomerate Rakuten for acquisition.

However, such talks were failed to fructify.

It also presented its key metrics, claiming to have 40 million customers and that its contribution margin is at Rs 65 per order.

The company shared another blog on its platform by Sethi and said that it closed fiscal 2018 with revenue from operations of $42 million from $28 million in fiscal 2017. Losses during fiscal 2018 came down to $31 million.

In the email, Sethi also revealed his plan to launch the company in the US, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The company has also signed contracts to enable cross-border trade between China and India, said the email.

Despite all the claims made by the company, the onground situation is different for the the Tiger Global-backed firm. Notably, in the last few months, the marketplace has suffered a hyge loss in daily orders.

The Gurugram-based firm has fired about 350 employees across two tranches in the past 15 months. In May 2017, over 250 employees either resigned or were fired from ShopClues. Four months ago, in yet another round of layoff, the company laid off 50 employees.

Talking about tall claims, Shopclues has even been talking about going IPO for the past two years. The company recently talked about the plan in February this year. Talking to an online media platform, Sethi said, “Demonetisation and GST pushed our IPO plans to 2019.”

The development was first reported by Mint.

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