After recording a 2X growth in revenue in the fiscal year ending March 2017, Bigbasket’s wholesale arm ‘Supermarket Grocery Supplies’ has witnessed a 12 per cent rise in its operating loss during the same period.
The Alibaba-backed company made a loss of Rs 312 crore in FY17 as compared to Rs 277 crore in the previous fiscal, reports ET via Tofler.
The company’s financial report with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs also showed that the overall loss shot up by almost 7 times from Rs 95 crore in FY16 to Rs 653 crore in FY17 due to “fair value changed to the financial liabilities”.
Employee benefit expenses of Rs 138.9 crore is considered to be one of the major reason behind company’s net loss.
During its last financial details, the company had claimed a turnover of Rs 1,176 crore in FY17, which was more than double from Rs 563 crore in the previous fiscal.
On the other hand, Bigbasket, retail or consumer-facing arm had reported revenue of Rs 1,090 crore in FY17, which was 107 per cent jump from Rs 527 crore in the previous fiscal. The retail arm under the brand name of Innovative retail’s losses increased to Rs 191 crore in FY17, which was Rs 103.4 crore in FY16.
For uninitiated, BigBasket has two operating entities. Supermarket Groceries sources products from companies and sells them to Innovative Retail, which in turn runs the consumer-facing portal and makes the last-mile delivery.
Flush with funds, BigBasket is looking to tap the offline and subscription-based model. The company has been negotiating with micro-delivery platforms such as RainCan and SuprDaily for a potential acquisition to maintain its leadership.
In August last year, BigBasket got Indian government’s nod for foreign direct investment (FDI). Now, the firm can retail food products manufactured and produced in India.
The Bengaluru-based firm had raked in $300 million Series E round led by Alibaba in February, this year. Besides, it is also looking to raise another round of about $500 million to take on Grofers and horizontal e-commerce marketplace Flipkart and Amazon.
