Marketplace roll-up platform Mensa Brands has managed notable growth in scale in the last fiscal year as its operating revenues soared 3.9X. However, its losses also spiked 2.4X and neared Rs 330 crore in FY23.
While we will come at expense and loss components in the second half of the story, for now let’s focus on revenue and sources.
Mensa Brands’ operating revenue flew to Rs 1,317 crore [$160.6 million] during the fiscal year ending March 2023 as compared to Rs 339.2 crore [$41.36 million] in FY22, as per the company’s group entity’s financial statements in Singapore.
The sale of products from its portfolio firms formed 98.5% of its revenue which stood at Rs 1,297 crore while Rs 17.7 crore came from sale of services.
The cost of materials consumed remained the largest cost center for Mensa which includes fashion and home products. This cost formed 32.5% of total and shot up 3.6X to Rs 563.59 crore in FY23.
Expenses Breakdown
https://thekredible.com/company/mensa-brands/financials
View Full Data
https://thekredible.com/company/mensa-brands/financials
View Full Data
- Cost of materials
- Marketplace
- Employee benefits
- Advertisement & promotions
- Freight and forwarding
- Others
Commission paid to the marketplace was the second major cost and exploded 5X to Rs 406.39 crore in FY23 from Rs 81.67 crore in FY22. Further, its employee benefit cost tripled to Rs 114.23 crore in FY23 which also includes employee share based payments of Rs 20.2 crore.
Advertising, freight and forwarding expenses also spiked at a similar pace during the last fiscal year. At the end, Mensa Brands’ total cost jumped 3.5X to Rs 1,731.6 crore [$211.17 million] in FY23 in comparison to Rs 488 crore in FY22.
See TheKredible for the detailed expense breakup.
Akin to the rising expenses, losses of the Bengaluru-based firm also jumped 2.4X to Rs 329 crore [$40.1 million] during the last fiscal against Rs 134.6 crore [$16.41 million] in FY22. Mensa operating cash flow also went up 55% to Rs 249.4 crore in FY23.
The Tiger Global-backed company has booked Rs 211.5 crore [$25.8 million] worth changes in fair value of purchase consideration and put options into its expenses which are non-cash in nature. We have excluded this component from total expenses, losses and calculating ratios.
Additionally, Mensa recorded an EBITDA of Rs -19.35 crore [$-2.4 million] during FY23, excluding the above non-cash expenses.
The EBITDA margin of Mensa bettered to -3.02% in FY23 from -13.13% in the previous year. On a unit level, Mensa Brands spent Rs 1.31 to earn a rupee of operating revenue in FY23.
FY22-FY23
| FY22 | FY23 |
| EBITDA Margin | -13.13% | -3.02% |
| Expense/₹ of Op Revenue | ₹1.44 | ₹1.31 |
| ROCE | -4.58% | -10.97% |
Significantly, Mensa is the only company in the e-commerce roll up space to raise funding even in debt in 2023. All players including GlobalBees, Goat Brand Labs, Upscalio, and Evenflow have not been able to raise a new round for the last 18 months. Meanwhile, 10club pivoted to become a consumer brand for home and kitchen.
With 25 plus brands in its portfolio across categories, and still trailing heavy losses, the whole proposition of a house of brands probably doesn’t look as attractive as it did a couple of years back. On top of that, post pandemic, even as competition online has grown, firms have increasingly been forced to stake out an offline presence as well, usually at a high cost.
While Mensa Brands will be best placed to judge the unit economics and potential for each of the brands it runs, we believe the firm might yet face a grim choice of divesting some, and focusing on others to come anywhere close to its promise of profitable growth. With the D2c startup every company loved to ape, Thrasio in the US already in trouble with a bankruptcy filing in November, it’s time for India’s many ‘me too’ D2C firms to display some serious desi innovation to find a viable path to profitability.
We have said this earlier as well, but integrating young, entrepreneur-built brands into anything resembling a centralized process is as challenging as it gets anywhere, especially in India where even the said entrepreneurs may not realise the secret sauce behind their success. The risks of losing said secret sauce during integration is very real, and more and more D2C firms have realised it by now.
