FirstCry revenue soars, but losses surge six-fold in FY23

FirstCry revenue soars, but losses surge six-fold in FY23

Baby care e-commerce retailer FirstCry posted a six-fold jump in its losses to Rupees 486 crore in FY23 as expenses soared despite a 2x jump in sales, according to its RoC filing sourced from Private Circle.

The company posted a revenue from operations of Rupees 5,632 crore in FY23, which is more than double compared to the Rupees 2,401 crore a year ago. Its expenses jumped 146% to Rupees 6,316 crore, from Rupees 2,568 crore in FY22.

While employee-related costs jumped 127%, advertising and promotional expenses rose 55%. Its depreciation and amortisation expenses also more than doubled to Rupees 294 crore.

In the last decade, the company only managed to briefly turn profitable in FY21, generating a profit of Rupees 216 crore, compared to a loss of Rupees 162.7 crore in the preceding year. Its losses have largely fluctuated from around Rupees 41 crore to as high as Rupees 932 crore in FY19.

Despite mounting losses, its revenue has scaled consistently over the past several years as it continued expanding its retail footprint. Founded in 2010 by Supam Maheshwari and Amitava Saha, the firm initially started as an online baby care brand but soon switched to an omnichannel strategy, much like most direct-to-consumer players.

In 2016, FirstCry acquired M&M’s baby care business “BabyOye” for Rupees 362 crore, and later consolidated both businesses as FirstCry.com. Then in 2019, it entered the education space by acquiring playschool chain Oi Playschool.

Talks of its public listing has been around for the past couple of years but the company has not confirmed any dates. Recently, a PTI report said that FirstCry may file its draft paper with the regulator this week.

The report added that its largest institutional investor SoftBank has sold shares worth $310 million in FirstCry ahead of its IPO, valuing the company in the range of $3.5-3.75 billion. SoftBank had earlier invested $400 million in the company.

FirstCry also counts Elevation, Vertex Ventures and Ratan Tata among its investors. As per Tracxn, it has so far raised $965 million and its current valuation stands at $2.7 billion.