Dailyhunt lost Rs 159 Cr to earn Rs 126 Cr in FY18

Vernacular news aggregator Dailyhunt’s financial reports for FY18 show how maintaining native and global operational figures is important to any company that plans to or has already expanded overseas.

In its RoC filing with MCA, the company reported a 5 per cent decrease in its revenue, down from Rs 132.9 crore in FY17 to Rs 126.23 crore in FY18. The turnover from the sale of services went down by 1.1 per cent to Rs 113.21 crore.

The revenue from operations of the company is separated into two categories - India and abroad. The local income clocked by the company for FY18 grew by 7.1 per cent to Rs 80.94 crore, but with 13 per cent decrease (to Rs 27.1 crore) in the overseas income, the company lost 5 per cent in the total figure.

Even in its global operations, Dailyhunt saw a growth in revenue in the countries USA and Singapore. In the former, the increase was 36.4 per cent to Rs 6.8 crore, and in the latter, the figure rose to Rs 20.21 crore by 20.5 per cent.

It was Africa and Dubai where the business of Dailyhunt suffered, and created a negative impact on the company's, albeit small, growth.

The expenses for the Virendra Kumar Gupta led company in FY18 rose by 11.5 per cent, up from Rs 256.26 crore to Rs 285.65 core. Out of this, the largest area of expense - employee benefit - also cost the company 17.8 per cent more than in FY17 (Rs 106.63 crore to be precise).

As a consequence of the decrease in revenue and the increase in expenses, the losses of the company hiked up to Rs 159.45 crore in FY18, a 28.6 per cent increase from Rs 124.02 crore figure in the previous fiscal.

After a gap of two years, the Bengaluru based company had picked up an $11 million Series E round across September and October this year. Three months ago, it had raised $6 million (Rs 45.5 crore) from Falcon Edge, and a month later $5 million (Rs 37 crore) from LightVC.

Currently, Dailyhunt is in talks to raise $100 million from new and existing investors. The company that had hired Umang Bedi as President in February this year, competes with the likes of InShorts, NewsDog, Viral Shorts among others.