Home healthcare solution provider Portea has been struggling to scale which is evident from its stagnant growth in FY23. At the same time, the Accel-backed firm’s losses grew 32% during the fiscal year ending March 2023.
Portea’s revenue from operations declined 3.3% to Rs 145 crore in FY23 from Rs 150 crore in FY22, its annual consolidated financial statements filed with the Registrar of Companies show.
Portea brings quality medical care into patients’ homes to make primary healthcare accessible and accountable. Income from the products used and services offered to the patients were the primary source of revenue for the company.
As per Portea’s website, the company has provided services to over 1 million patients and conducts 700,000 patient visits annually. Additionally, it has established partnerships with 63 leading hospitals.
For the home healthcare provider, the consumables used for patient treatment and employee benefits jointly formed more than half (51%) of its overall expenditure. These costs stood at Rs 55 crore and Rs 50 crore respectively during FY23.
Its consultancy fees, advertising cum promotional, traveling, legal, information/technology, and other overheads catalyzed the overall expenditure to Rs 206 crore in FY23 from Rs 204 crore in FY22.
View TheKredible for the complete expense breakdown
Expenses Breakdown
https://thekredible.com/company/portea/financials
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https://thekredible.com/company/portea/financials
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- Employee benefit
- Cost of material consumed
- Advertising promotional
- Consultancy expenses
- Travelling conveyance
- Information technology
- Others
The stagnant scale and fixed overheads led Portea to register a Rs 53 crore loss during FY23 where the figures stood at Rs 40 crore in FY22. Its ROCE and EBITDA margins stood at -94% and -27.5%, respectively.
On a unit level, Portea spent Rs 1.42 to earn a rupee in FY23.
Caveat: We have excluded an exceptional item of Rs 20.5 crore while calculating the bottom line for FY23.
Portea has raised around $90 million across several rounds. According to the startup data intelligence platform TheKredible, Accel is the largest external stakeholder with 32.38% followed by Ventureast, MEMG, and Qualcomm. Head to TheKredible for the complete shareholding pattern.
FY22-FY23
| FY22 | FY23 |
| EBITDA Margin | -20% | -27.5% |
| Expense/₹ of Op Revenue | ₹1.36 | ₹1.42 |
| ROCE | -206% | -94% |
Founded by Meena Ganesh and Ganesh Krishnan, after their successful exit from Tutorvista in 2011, Portea benefited from the reputation of its founder to attract strong investor interest. It did well enough to even consider an IPO in 2022, before hitting a wall. While blaming Covid would be an obvious excuse here, we believe the firm actually had its chance to build a reputation during and post the pandemic, even if at a higher temporary cost, but fluffed it.
For now, it seems like a promising business on a standalone basis, but will be weighed down by its long decade plus legacy. With its last funding raised in 2021, Portea faces a moment of reckoning, and it remains to be seen if the founder’s experience with compelling narratives and exits will come to its rescue soon.
