RENEE Cosmetics’ revenue jumps 5X in FY22, slips into losses

New age beauty brand RENEE Cosmetics is aiming to reach the Rs 200 crore revenue mark by the end of 2023 and raise it to Rs 500 crore by 2024. The ambitious goals are clearly driven by the company’s performance: its revenue jumped over 5x in the fiscal year ending March 2022. But, there’s more to this than meets the eye.

RENEE Cosmetics’ gross revenue from operations was Rs 32.2 crore during FY22, up by 5.1x from Rs 6.37 crore in FY21, as per the company’s annual financial statements with the Registrar of Companies.

The Mensa Brands-backed company also earned non-operating income, including profit on sale of vehicles of Rs 24 lakh during the year, which took the overall revenue to Rs 32.43 crore during FY22.

RENEE describes itself as a ‘cruelty-free’ beauty brand, and offers a wide range of eye makeup, lip colors, skin serums, and highlighters. These products are available via e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, Flipkart, and Myntra along with over 650 shop-in-shop stores across India.

Along with its presence in malls, stores, and airports, RENEE has also garnered a huge demand in the overseas market. And now, it’s set to start exporting products to the UAE, and eventually to more countries in the near future.

The growth in scale is also evident from a big jump in staff, selling & distribution costs during the year. However, the rise in expenditure dragged the company into the red. RENEE posted Rs 7.26 crore loss in FY22 against Rs 53 lakh profit in FY21.

Coming to expenses, selling & distribution (including advertisement, courier, influencers, discounts, merchant commission and other related expenses) turned out to be the largest cost for RENEE, accounting for 67.2% of the total expenditure. This cost shot up 6.9X to Rs 26.67 crore during FY22 from Rs 3.85 crore in FY21.

Cost of procurement of beauty products surged over 6X to Rs 7.1 crore during FY22 from Rs 1.16 crore in FY21. To go with the flow of scale, RENEE hired more resources, as a result, its employee benefits expenses exploded 14.4X to Rs 4.6 crore during the same period which steered its overall expenditure by 7X to Rs 39.67 crore in FY22 as compared to Rs 5.67 crore in FY21.

On a unit level, RENEE Cosmetics spent Rs 1.23 to earn a rupee of operating revenue in FY22.

As per the company, provisional revenue of RENEE has grown around 3X and crossed Rs 100 crore during FY23 with an EBITDA of 25-30%. With the growing scale, RENEE also aims to become profitable by FY24.

RENEE has raised a total funding of $36 million to date across three rounds. In late 2022, it raised $25 million in a series B round led by Evolvence India. The Ahmedabad-based D2C startup, RENEE competes with Lakme, Sugar, and MyGlamm, among others.