Uniorbit Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which operates buy-now-pay-later platform Uni, posted a net loss of Rs 139.5 crore in its first fully functional fiscal in FY22, as a result of a sharp rise in promotional and employee costs.
Uni, which was incorporated in August 2020, started offering its services in May 2021. In FY21, it reported a loss of Rs 4.06 crore with no operational revenue. Its revenue from operations stood at Rs 13.7 crore in FY22, as per the company's annual financial statement with the Registrar of Companies (RoC).
Mails sent to Uni remained unanswered till the time of publishing.
Uni was founded by Nitin Gupta, who was previously the co-founder of PayU India and served in leadership positions at Bajaj Finserv and Ola Financial Services. The company raised $18.7 million in one of the largest seed funding rounds led by Lightspeed and Accel in October 2020, months before it launched its first product.
The company also bagged $70 million as a part of its Series A round led by General Catalyst in December 2021 at a valuation of $350 million. It also counts Eight Roads Ventures, Elevation Capital, and Arbor Ventures as its backers.
In FY22, the company’s total expenses ballooned to Rs 161.7 crore against Rs 6.51 crore in the previous fiscal. Its employee benefit cost grew more than eight times to Rs 33.2 crore from Rs 4.05 crore, as it expanded its team from just a handful of people to close to 250.
At Rs 66.6 crore, Uni also spent a large proportion of its expenses on promotions in the last financial year. The cost was comparatively negligible in FY21 at just Rs 8.5 lakh, as the company was just starting out in the fiscal.
Uni provided prepaid card products to its customers in partnerships with non-banking financial corporations (NBFCs) and banks. It started by offering Pay 1/3rd, which allowed customers to pay for goods in three EMIs over three months, with no extra charges. It came with Uni Pay 1/2 early this year, which allowed users to pay within two months at zero charges.
Uni pitted against the likes of Slice and PayU-owned LazyPay in the BNPL segment. However, with the Reserve Bank of India’s guidelines on prepaid payment instruments (PPI), it now appears to be pivoting to turn into a credit card company. It will soon start offering its NX Wave Credit Card in partnership with SBM Bank and will likely compete against credit card unicorn OneCard.
