LeadSquared, a software as a service (SaaS) platform turned unicorn after raising $153 million in a Series C funding round from WestBridge Capital and existing investors in June 2022. The company’s entry into the $1 billion-plus valuation club came on the back of a close to 2X jump in its scale during FY22.
LeadSquared has maintained that momentum with revenue from operations soaring to Rs 193.5 crore in FY22 from Rs 99.5 crore in FY21, according to its annual financial statements filed with the Registrar of Companies (RoC).
LeadSquared provides end-to-end sales, marketing, and onboarding automation solutions to its customers. As per Fintrackr’s analysis, the sale of these services is the only source of operating revenue for the company in FY22. It also made Rs 7.1 crore in FY22 mostly from its financial assets.
On the cost side, employee benefits expenses are the major cost for the company constituting around 54% of the overall cost, growing 2.3X to Rs 142.2 crore in FY22.
Being a SaaS company, the cost of technical services is another prominent expenditure which ballooned 2.4X to Rs 58 crore in FY22. Advertising and promotion expenses as well as business support charges also increased 2.6X and 2.4X to Rs 9.76 crore and Rs 16.21 crore respectively during the last fiscal year.
The company spent another Rs 13.21 crore on legal and professional fees which pushed its total expenses by 2.3X to Rs 262.3 crore in FY22.
With all key cost centres growing faster than revenues in FY22, its losses also spiked 5.4X to Rs 62 crore in the last fiscal year from Rs 11.3 crore in FY21.
On a unit level, LeadSquared spent Rs 1.36 to earn a single rupee. With a sharp increase in the cost, the EBITDA margin and ROCE of the company worsened to -28.58% and -42.73% in the fiscal year ending March 2022.
During its latest fundraise, LeadSquared claimed that it has more than 2,000 customers. Besides Bengaluru, it has a presence in New Jersey, the Philippines, South Africa, Australia, and Indonesia. Looking at the company’s revenue, one can see that it got over 38X revenue multiple in its valuation, a number that will surely be expected to normalise with high growth going ahead too. Nilesh Patel, CEO of LeadSquared, recently said that the company targets $200 million (Rs 1,600 crore) in revenue in the next three to four years.
