Fashion marketplace Myntra shrinks FY17 loss to around $100 mn
Flipkart-owned Myntra Designs Pvt. Ltd narrowed its consolidated loss by a quarter to Rs 654 crore ($101 million) for 2016-17, even as the online fashion retailer’s combined revenue climbed 87%.
Consolidated loss for 2015-16 was Rs 823 crore, as per the firm’s filings to the Registrar of Companies accessed through VCCEdge, the data research platform of News Corp VCCircle.
On a standalone basis, the company narrowed its loss to Rs 627 crore for 2016-17 from Rs 816 crore the year before.
Myntra Designs is a marketplace whose revenue does not reflect the value of merchandise sold through the website or app. Instead, its revenue reflects listing fees, money from data processing, and so on, although it does absorb much of the customer acquisition cost, discounting expenses and more.
In January, Myntra reported that its combined revenue had climbed to Rs 2,000 crore for the year through March 2017, from Rs 1,032 crore the year before. Nearly 94% of the revenue came from the trading business and the rest from data processing and other activities via its portal, the filing to the Registrar of Companies showed.
The filing also showed that Myntra had a negative net worth of Rs 363 crore at the end of March 2017 due to soaring debt. Its outstanding secured loans stood at Rs 47.96 crore and unsecured borrowings at Rs 882.34 crore, totalling Rs 930.3 crore at the end of March 2017.
The narrower loss at Myntra is in line with the financials of other Flipkart group companies. Last week, Flipkart India Pvt. Ltd, the wholesale arm of e-commerce major Flipkart, more than halved its losses for the year through March 2017 as revenue rose and it controlled its expenses.
As part of its measures directed towards profitability, Myntra has been increasing its private label business. In August, the fashion e-tailer had said its private label vertical had turned profitable, registering an operating profit margin of 5% in June 2017.
Myntra currently has 13 private labels including Roadster, HRX, Mast & Harbour, Dressberry, Ether, Anouk, K&K, Harvard, and Invictus, which currently account for 23% of its combined revenues.
The company is also investing in new technologies. In December, it said it was planning to turn its artificial intelligence and machine learning platform called Rapid into a separate business vertical. Recently, Myntra bought a Bengaluru-based wearable tech startup for an undisclosed amount.