Last-mile delivery and e-commerce support services have seen an upsurge in demand in the last couple of years with the growth of several D2C brands and SMEs that don’t have the supply chain prowess that segment giants Flipkart and Amazon possess. As per a RedSeer report, the last-mile delivery market in India is expected to reach $6-7 billion by 2024.
Logistics startups like Shiprocket, Delhivery and XpressBees fill this vacuum and have seen their operational scale grow multifold during FY21. Another company in this segment is Loadshare, which registered over 80% growth in its operating income during fiscal ending March 2021.
Load share offers a range of logistics solutions including hyperlocal, line-haul delivery and warehousing services. The company has managed to grow its operating revenue by 81.4% to Rs 189.54 crore in FY21 from Rs 104.5 crore in FY20, its annual financial statement filed with RoC shows.
At present, LoadShare claims to deliver more than 3 lakh hyperlocal and e-commerce orders per day and revenue from these āBusinesses to Consumer (B2C) deliveries made up 56.1% of its operating revenue. Collections from this vertical surged nearly 91% to Rs 106.4 crore during FY21 from Rs 55.8 crore in FY20.
The Tiger Global-backed company also claims to do over twenty thousand business to business shipments every day and around five thousand trips via its line-haul trucking vertical each month. Revenue from its B2B delivery and trucking business surged by 73.6% YoY to Rs 83.1 crore, accounting for 43.8% of Loadshareās total revenue in FY21.
Loadshare collected the rest Rs 5.12 Lakh in FY21 via subscription fees charged from delivery partners and customers on its platform which shrank by nearly 92% as compared to Rs 61 lakh collected in FY20.Ā Ā
The logistics company also earned non-operating income of Rs 1.6 crore from its financial assets during the last fiscal.
Currently, Loadshare has a partner fleet of over 10 thousand bike delivery personnel, 1,500 truck drivers across 150 districts in India.Ā It pays delivery charges (including cash handling fees) to its partners registered on its platform which is the largest cost centre of the company, making up 76.1% of its annual expenses.Ā
Such costs grew in line with revenues, surging by 91.4% to Rs 174.2 crore during FY21 from around Rs 91 crore paid out in FY20.
Employee benefits paid out by the company accounted for 16.2% of Loadshareās annual costs, growing by 36.8% YoY to Rs 37.08 crore (including ESOP related expenses of Rs 1.6 crore) during FY21.
Further down in the expense sheet, we observed that Loadshareās finance costs have surged by over 173% from a little less than Rs 1 crore to over Rs 2.73 crore during FY21.Ā
This was caused by the 38X increase in the quantum of loans taken by the company which grew to Rs 42.06 crore in FY21 as compared to only Rs 1.1 crore in FY20. Importantly, the company did not raise any equity funding in the last fiscal after receiving around Rs 95.3 crore in FY20.Ā
Rent, repair & utility payments grew by nearly 25% YoY to Rs 5.01 crore while information technology (IT) costs grew by 46.7% YoY to Rs 2.2 crore during FY21.
Overall, Loadshareās annual expenditure surged 69.3% to Rs 229 crore during FY21 from Rs 135.3 crore in FY20. The company spent Rs 1.2 to earn a single rupee of operating revenue during the last fiscal year.
While the five-year-old company increased its operational scale by over 81%, it managed to improve its EBITDA margin by 860 BPS to -17.9% in FY21 from -26.5% in FY20.
Despite improvement in EBITDA, the logistics startupās annual losses rose nearly 35% to Rs 39.8 crore during FY21 from Rs 29.6 crore lost in FY20. This was mainly due to the surge in the actual quantum of expenses and the 26% growth in negative cash flow from operations to Rs 45.04 crore during the last fiscal.
A couple of months ago LoadShare raised Rs 300 crore (around $40 million) in its Series C funding round led by Tiger Global taking its total funding raised to $61.4 million to date. The company will be utilising these funds to expand its network across Tier 2-Tier 3 cities in India and capitalise on the growing 10-30 minute delivery segment. In December last year, the company onboarded Abey Zachariah and Mahesh Herle(Co-founders of hyperlocal grocery startup Goodbox) to bolster its last-mile technology and quick commerce team.
As Loadshare only operates as a technology platform for other businesses to fulfil their logistics needs, it has managed to maintain its asset-light model. But the growth stage company will be looking to increase its efficiency with economies of scale while facing stiff competition from other startups including Shiprocket, Shipsy and Porter all of which have raised significant venture rounds during the last six months.
