Bizongo, a business-to-business (B2B) marketplace, widened its net loss in the last financial year as a surge in expenses offset a fivefold jump in revenue.
The Tiger Global-backed startup posted a net loss of ₹100 crore in the year ended March, compared to ₹86 crore in FY21.
Operating revenue grew to ₹1,711 crore from ₹315 crore, showed the company’s latest filings with the Registrar of Companies. Expenses rose over 4.5 times to ₹1820 crore from ₹404 crore.
Bizongo is targeting a three to fourfold growth in revenue this financial year, co-founder Aniket Deb said in an interview.
“As small businesses become more digital savvy, thanks to widespread proliferation of smartphones and cheaper access to data, corporates sourcing unbranded goods like apparel, textile, agri products, speciality chemicals and packaging will expedite digitization of their vendor management and supply chain,” he added.
VCCircle reported in October that the e-commerce and supply chain enablement platform is looking to raise $100-150 million as part of its Series E round at a unicorn valuation.
It operates as a B2B SaaS (software-as-a-service) platform for packaging materials.
“We have always had a sharp focus on achieving positive unit economics. Bizongo has been Ebitda (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) positive since September 2021 thanks to the efforts of our people in following sustainable business practices and to our technology powered asset light model,” said Deb.
The Mumbai-based firm is targeting about $2-2.5 billion annualized revenue and $50 million in annualized Ebitda in the next 12-18 months.
Founded in 2015 by Deb, Sachin Agrawal, and Ankit Tomar, three IIT graduates, Bizongo aims to digitize the fragmented B2B segment of made-to-order goods.
It currently has three key product lines spanning digital automation, supply chain financing and cloud-factory platform.
The startup offers boxes, containers, pouches and bags for industries such as food and hospitality, consumer goods and retail.
It focuses on packaging, textiles, apparel and other contract manufacturing goods with a network of over 6,300 partner factories.
During FY22, Bizongo’s purchase of stock-in-trade accounted for about 90% of the expenses totalling ₹1636 crore, up from ₹315 crore in the previous year.
The company’s spend on employee benefits grew 10% to Rs 62 crore during the year. It has a team of about 300 people, and plans to hire up to 50 more people over the next year.
Bizongo had raised $110 million as a part of its Series D round led by Tiger Global Management last year. The fundraise had valued the company at $600 million. The company raised another $25 million in August.
As for the next round, Deb said “we have been in active discussions for our next round and expect to close it by the end of this financial year.”
Bizongo had also acquired Bengaluru-based edtech cloud platform Hexa and Internet of Things firm Clean Slate Technologies.
