ShopClues sees its scale decline by nearly 50% in FY22

Tiger Global-backed one time unicorn and e-commerce platform ShopClues which was sold to Qoo10 for less than $100 million in 2019 seems to be on the verge of oblivion: there is continuous erosion of its scale since its acquisition in FY20.

ShopClues’ operating scale dipped 48% to Rs 59.9 crore in FY22 from Rs 115.1 crore in FY21, according to financial statements filed by its Indian entity with the Registrar of Companies.

Commission earned on sales, fulfillment, packaging, and merchant listing fees accounted for 88.3% of the firm’s total operating revenue which stood at Rs 52.9 crore. Around Rs 7 crore came from parent company Clues Network Inc against technology support.

Shipment charges formed 27.5% of the overall expenditure which contracted by 37.9% to Rs 30.7 crore in FY22 from Rs 49.4 crore in FY21. Since the company has been downscaling its operations, its employee benefit and advertising costs shrank 56.1% and 40% to Rs 27.6 crore and Rs 24.8 crore respectively during FY22.

ShopClues booked Rs 15.5 crore as miscellaneous expenses which include IT support, software development, office expenses, transaction charges et al. Its overall costs shrank by 35.9% to Rs 111.7 crore in FY22 from Rs 174.30 crore in FY21.

The all round contraction means that ShopClues’ losses remained stable at around Rs 50 crore during FY22 and its EBITDA margin worsened to -72.03%. On a unit level, the firm spent Rs 1.86 to earn a single rupee.

Shopclues has been, for all practical purposes, a zombie firm,  keeping some business going seemingly from memory and for little to no benefit to anyone but a few people. The firm, which at its peak was virtually a thrift store selling all sorts of knick knacks with little checks on the provenance of its sellers, probably serves a purpose for some to offload their goods even now. But there is no question that the end is nigh for this version at least, and the sooner it is put out of its misery, the better it will be.