Ninjacart, one of India's largest supply-chain startups, has set eyes on profitability even as it looks to expand into new segments under a new chief executive.
The Flipkart-Walmart-backed company has expanded from being a fresh produce supply chain company to being an online marketplace that connects farmers, traders, retailers, exporters and importers of farm produce on its trading platform.
"We used to be a marketplace primarily between farmers and retailers," Chief Executive Officer Kartheeswaran KK told BQ Prime over a video interaction. "Now, we have expanded our offerings to all value chain players."
That's the primary change. Secondly, on top of the fulfilment offering, it has launched commerce and credit, according to KK.
Kartheeswaran KK, co-founder and CEO, Ninjacart. (Source: company)
Kartheeswaran KK, co-founder and CEO, Ninjacart. (Source: company)
KK, who took over the top role from Thirukumaran Natarajan due to the latter's medical exigency, has been at the helm for the past year and a half. "I'm running the company as CEO, and Thiru is still associated with Ninjacart. He's still the promoter and director. I hope he resumes office soon," he said.
On the financial side, the company said it posted revenues of Rs 1,212.5 crore in the last financial year, up from Rs 967 crore in fiscal 2022. It has yet to file its earnings with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. Hence, the profit/loss statement isn't available. However, KK said the burn "would largely be the same."
The Bengaluru-based agritech posted a gross merchandise value of around Rs 1,600 crore in 2022–23 and looks to touch Rs 4,000–5,000 crore in the current fiscal.
"Of the Rs 1,600 crore, roughly 60% of that came from the fulfilment business, and 30% came from the new offerings. The burn would largely remain the same at a company level; however, our business started turning more profitable," he said.
Founded in 2015, Ninjacart has raised $377 million, or about Rs 3,100 crore, from marquee investors like Tiger Global Management LLC and Accel, as well as Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani, so far. It last raised about $145 million, or around Rs 1,200 crore, from Flipkart and Walmart at a valuation of $815 million, or Rs 6,780 crore.
Tiger Global is the single largest shareholder, with about 19.7% stake. Accel owns 15.2% in the company, while Walmart and Flipkart hold about 26.2% combined, according to data from market intelligence platform PrivateCircle.
"When we raised funds two years back, we had (a) runway of roughly three to four years. As we speak, about 50% of our business is profitable and generating cash. So our runway still remains about three to four years," KK said.
"By the end of this fiscal year, I strongly believe like about 80% of our business will become profitable, so we will still have (a) runway from that point of view. With the money we have today, we can be profitable," he said.
The company aims to be fully profitable by fiscal 2026. "In FY23, we grew 1.6 times. This year, we're closing towards 2.5–3x growth," he said. "I think we still have a huge market to capture, so we'll probably go raise funds sometime next year purely to fuel our expansion strategy."
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