Softbank-backed business-to-business (B2B) online commerce platform ElasticRun’s loss widened to Rs 373 crore in the financial year 2022, up from Rs 101 crore in the previous fiscal, due to a sharp rise in the cost of procuring goods and employee benefits expense.
The Pune-based firm, operated by Ntex Transportation Services Pvt. Ltd, became a unicorn early this year after it raised $300 million in a funding round led by SoftBank Group, Prosus Ventures and Goldman Sachs. The round valued the company at close to $1.5 billion.
In FY22, ElasticRun’s revenue from operations jumped to Rs 3,813 crore from Rs 1,081 crore in the previous financial year. The company earned Rs 3847 crore from sale of products while it made Rs 325 crore from sale of services in FY22.
Founded in March 2016 by Sandeep Deshmukh, Saurabh Nigam and Shitiz Bansal, ElasticRun focuses on rural markets, offering merchants goods directly from the brands. It claims to be aggregating supply from more than 400 brands in over 80,000 villages across 26 states.
The company’s total expense for the FY22 stood at Rs 4,187 crore, rising sharply from just Rs 1,188 crore in the previous fiscal. Its cost for procurement of goods, which made up for majority of total expenses, jumped 328.4% to Rs 3,466 crore, compared to Rs 809 crore in FY21. Whereas, its employee benefits expense grew more than 2.5x to Rs 202 crore.
The company also offers logistics and warehousing services to its clients. It claims to eliminate fixed set-up costs by aggregating resources across channels, thus helping its customers reduce logistics spending. The company claims to cater to clients in the ecommerce, pharmaceuticals, food and automotive sectors. The firm spent around Rs 417 crore on the distribution of goods and Rs 36 crore on rent in the last financial year.
ElasticRun also has partnerships with banks and non-bank financial institutions (NBFCs) to provide capital to its merchant partners. As per the company, the transaction data generated on the ElasticRun platform enables financial institutions to bring in a large number of rural stores as their SME (small and medium-sized enterprises) customers.
In April last year, ElasticRun raised $75 million in its Series D financing round co-led by existing investors Avataar Ventures and Prosus Ventures, along with the participation of Kalaari Capital.
