PagarBook spent Rs 16 to earn one rupee in FY22

With around Rs 5 crore in topline and Rs 69 crore losses at the end of fiscal year ending March 2022, employee management startup PagarBook in the last quarter of FY22 announced to become full-stack digital banking solution for SME employees.

While the impacts of this development would be seen in its financials for FY23, for now, lets jump into its FY22 numbers.

PagarBook’s revenue from operations skyrocketed to Rs 4.55 crore during FY22 as compared to Rs 11 lakh in FY21, according to its consolidated financial statements with the Registrar of Companies.

Founded in 2019, PagarBook is a staff salary, work, and attendance management app for small and medium enterprises. It helps merchants to handle employee-related tasks in a single app that synchronizes across multiple devices in real-time.

Collection from above mentioned services was the sole source of operating income for PagarBook. Besides this, it also cornered interest and capital gains of Rs 1.23 crore during FY22.

As per its website, the four-year-old firm offers apps across 10 local languages and claims 80 lakh registered SMEs on its platform.

When it comes to cost, employee benefits formed 69% of the total expenditures. This expense ballooned 2.8X to Rs 51.86 crore in FY22 from Rs 18.68 crore in FY21. The rise in employee cost was steered by a nearly 5X surge in ESOP expenses during the last fiscal.

For background, PagarBook laid off almost the entire sales and marketing team (around 80 employees) in July 2021. This effect could also be seen in its advertising & promotional expenses which went down over 91% to Rs 5.7 crore in FY22.

PagarBook also incurred IT & communication (software, server, payments gateway, communication, SMS charges) and sales & distribution of Rs 4.91 crore and Rs 4.08 crore in FY22.

Amid major cost cutting measures, its total expenditure shrank 20.3% to Rs 75 crore in FY22. The Bengaluru-based company’s losses also contracted 26% to Rs 69.23 crore in FY22 against Rs 93.56 crore in FY22. On a unit level, PagarBook spent Rs 16.5 to earn a rupee of operating revenue during the year.

In June 2022, PagarBook was in a process to acquire Indonesian staff management application Vara in a stock deal as per an exclusive report by Entrackr. PagarBook has raised over $28 million to date from Sequoia, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), India Quotient among others. After its latest fundraise in June last year, it was valued at around $101 million (~Rs 735 crore).