Agritech startup Gramophone has been making its place in the agritech space with over 75% year-on-year growth during the fiscal year ended March 2023. At the same time, losses for the InfoEdge-backed company looked under control compared to other VC-backed agritech startups.
Gramophone’s gross revenue grew 75.6% to Rs 316 crore in FY23 from Rs 180 crore in FY22, its consolidated financial statements filed with the Registrar of Companies show.
Founded in 2016 by Nishant Mahatre and Tauseef Khan, Gramophone’s offerings include crop protection, crop nutrition, seeds, implements, and agri hardware. It also facilitates farmers to sell crops to vyapaaries (businessmen) directly through its Gram Vyapaar feature.
The sale of products (agri inputs) is the sole source of revenue for Gramophone.
For the agritech startup, the cost of procurement of inputs accounted for 81% of the overall expenditure. In the line of scale, this cost surged 76.2% to Rs 303 crore in FY23 from Rs 172 crore in FY22.
Its employee benefits, information technology, advertising cum promotional, provisions for trade receivables, and other overheads catalyzed the overall expenditure up by 70% to Rs 374 crore in FY23 from Rs 220 crore in FY22.
See TheKredible for the detailed expense breakup.
Expenses Breakdown
https://thekredible.com/company/gramophone/financials
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https://thekredible.com/company/gramophone/financials
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- Cost of materials consumed
- Employee benefit
- Information technology
- Advertising promotional
- Provision for Trade Receivables
- Others
Despite a decent scale, losses for the Gurugram-based company grew 48.7% to Rs 58 crore in FY23 from Rs 39 crore in FY22. Its ROCE and EBITDA stood at -119% and -17.4% respectively.
FY22-FY23
| FY22 | FY23 |
| EBITDA Margin | -21% | -17.4% |
| Expense/₹ of Op Revenue | ₹1.22 | ₹1.18 |
| ROCE | -57% | -119% |
On a unit level, it spent Rs 1.18 to earn a rupee in FY23.
With procurement costs (Rs 303 crores) accounting for almost 95% share of revenues (Rs 316 crores), Gramophone has an obvious margin challenge to manage, the common issue for all agritechs, unless they provide services. With other costs being much less elastic by now, there is no way out but to increase margins or topline without addition to non-procurement costs. Past performance indicates that it is easier said than done, and to that extent Gramophone, despite proving its market case, will need to pull off some major surprises to move into the black. With the plethora of agritechs out there, it will hopefully not need to search out the right answer for too long.
Gramophone has raised around $18 million to date including its $10 million Series B round led by Z3Partners. According to the startup data intelligence platform TheKredible, InfoEdge is the largest external stakeholder with 32.89% followed by Z3Partners and Siana Capital. Its co-founders Tauseef Ahmed Khan and Nishant Vats cumulatively hold 27.16% of the company.
