Shopclues, One of India’s most well-funded e-commerce players, makes for a curious and interesting case. With all its big funding rounds and unicorn badge, the Gurugram headquarter company has still not managed to become a formidable force in India’s e-commerce market. In fact, if latest reports are to be believed then today this four year old company is struggling to stay afloat.
However, Shopclues has now managed to get a much needed breather as it has raised nearly Rs 110 crore from its existing investors. The news was disclosed through a mail sent by Shopclues’ co-founder Sanjay Sethi to company employees earlier this week. Although Mr. Sethi’s mail did not disclose the names of the existing investors, but said without mincing any words that all is well with the company.
Separately, the company on Thursday claimed on its official blog post that it is heading back towards profitability during this Diwali season. This post may have been intended towards calming down employees as several reports having been doing rounds recently that company is planning to lay off employees to curb losses.
The blog then goes further to claim that Shopclues still has good market tractions with 40 million customers and contribution margin of nearly Rs 65 per order.
The company also put forward other numbers including the fact that it closed fiscal 2018 with revenue from operations of $42 million, healthy rise from $28 million in fiscal 2017. It also added that losses during fiscal 2018 trimmed down to $31 million.
These numbers, the company claimed, are good enough to fight the battle on its own and completely quashed the reports of possible acquisitions and merger.
The company also argued that its ability to connect with Tier 2, Tier 3 cities and SME’s is what distinguishes it from other big players like Flipkart and Amazon. Market’s obsession with business models followed by big players prompts people to continuously write down Shopclues’ obituaries, the company added.
