Grofers lost Rs 20 for each rupee it made in FY17 revenue

Gurgaon-based online grocery firm Grofers India Pvt. Ltd saw its net sales jump 65% and its losses widen year-on-year for the financial year 2016-17, filings with the Registrar of Companies show.

The company’s net sales, or revenue from operations, stood at Rs 13.2 crore in 2016-17 versus Rs 8 crore in 2015-16.

The company reported losses of Rs 268.3 crore in 2016-17, which expanded from Rs 225 crore the year before.

Total expenditure for 2016-17 was Rs 302.2 crore, up from Rs 239 crore registered in 2015-16.

On 30 June 2015, the company transferred the business from its entity Locodel Solutions Pvt. Ltd to Grofers India Pvt. Ltd. Grofers’ financial statement for 2016-17 represents this change.

Albinder Dhindsa, co-founder of Grofers, did not immediately respond to text messages seeking comment from TechCircle at the time of publishing this report.

For 2015-16, Locodel Solutions Pvt. Ltd had reported a sharp drop in revenue and a multifold jump in losses.

Revenue (total income) for that year through March 2016 fell 32% to Rs 58.34 lakh from Rs 86.38 lakh the previous year. Its net sales had dropped from Rs 73 lakh in 2014-15 to Rs 33 lakh in 2015-16.

Net loss had widened 15 times to Rs 60.87 crore from Rs 3.9 crore.

A spokesperson from Grofers said that the company has been growing at a rate of 11% month-on-month for the financial year 2017-18. "We are very pleased with our performance in FY18. At present, Grofers’ top line is almost 18x of what it was in 2015 and in the last one year, we have already witnessed four-fold growth in sales," the person added. The spokesperson did not comment on the firm's financials for 2016-17.

Last month, Grofers raised Rs 400 crore (around $62 million) in a Series E round led by existing investor Japanese Internet conglomerate SoftBank. Existing investors US-based Tiger Global and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner’s Apoletto Managers also participated in the round.

Prior to this, it raised funds in November 2015 in a round led by SoftBank. Existing investors Yuri Milner’s Apoletto Managers, Tiger Global, and Sequoia Capital also participated then. The quantum of funds raised then was $120 million (Rs 780 crore).

Grofers till date has raised $226.5 million in total funding.

“We took some hard decisions to fix parts of the business that were not scaling well. [We have] grown four-fold in the last one year [as] monthly sales [stand] in excess of Rs100 crore,” co-founder Dhindsa had said at the time of the fundraise.

The company was founded by Saurabh Kumar and Albinder Dhindsa in 2013. The company grew rapidly since it began operations but the growth took a toll on the firm, and in 2016, it exited nine cities, laid off employees, and tweaked its business model to an inventory-led one.

In an interaction with VCCircle in December 2017, Dhindsa said that the company is targeting middle-class customers and helping smaller brands reach more consumers through data analytics. Though the firm continues to be loss-making, it is investing in automation and building warehouses, he added. The company even works with small brands and has launched private labels in partnership with them.

*The article has been updated to include a statement from Grofers