Online classified platform Quikr’s revenue for the financial year-ended 2022 fell around 19% to Rs 49.1 crore compared to Rs 60.7 crore recorded during the preceding year, marking a third fiscal of declining revenue.
According to filings with the Registrar of Companies, Quikr generated almost half of its revenue from lead referral fee, earning Rs 24.5 crore during the year, down about 10% compared to the previous year.
It earned about Rs 21.7 crore from advertising revenue, about 17% lower than FY21; Income from commissions stood at Rs 1.3 crore and about Rs 1.5 crore from other services.
Intrestingly, the platform was able to narrow its losses to more than half, to Rs 21 crore in FY22 as it lost scale. It reported a loss of Rs 55.5 crore in FY21, led by control in all major expenses categories including employee benefits expense, finance cost and advertising expenses.
It spent about Rs 50 crore in FY22 on employee expenses-its largest expense–even more than it earned in operating income through the year.
The company, which has raised over $420 million as per data from VCCEdge, in the course of its lifetime, has been chronically loss-making. At one point, it was expanding its offerings aggressively relying on mergers and acquisitions (during 2015-16), which however, haven’t scaled.
Quikr, which was once valued at over a billion dollars, has seen markdowns in the past as investors grew wary.
For instance, in 2020, Stockholm-based AB Kinnevik, an investor in Quikr marked down the value of its shareholding in the platform by 45%, bringing its overall valuation to $569.9 million against $1.03 billion previously.
The startup, that has been backed by some marquee investors like Tiger Global, Alpha Wave Global, Matrix Partners and India Quotient in the past, operates an online marketplace, mainly earning revenue through advertising, commissions and referrals.
