Flipkart revenue rises to $6.14 bn in FY19
BENGALURU: Walmart-owned e-commerce platform Flipkart’s revenue grew 42% to over $6.14 billion (₹42,878 crore) in the year ending March 31, 2019, compared with ₹30,164 crore ($4.2 billion) in the previous fiscal year, according to the annual financial statement filed by its Singapore holding company on Thursday.
However, the company reduced its losses by 63% from $6.6 billion (about ₹46,900 crore) to $2.43 billion (₹17,231 crore) over the same period.
Total comprehensive income for the fiscal year 2019 was ₹22,883 crore, down from ₹47,370 crore in the last fiscal year.
Overall expenses reduced significantly from $6.6 billion (about ₹46,900 crore) in the preceding fiscal year to $2.4 billion (₹17,281 crore) in FY19.
While employee benefits costs increased 58% to ₹4,254 crore from ₹2,683 crore last year, finance costs fell massively to ₹4,282 crore from ₹40,937 crore last fiscal. Other expenses came in at ₹9,530 crore.
In August 2018, Us-based retail giant Walmart acquired a 77% stake in Flipkart for $16 billion.
The latest filings reveal details relating to Flipkart’s new acquisition strategy since Kalyan Krishnamurthy took over as Flipkart group chief executive officer in January 2017.
Flipkart group spent $47 million on acquisitions in FY19, including $21.4 million on the September 2018 acquisition of Israel-based Upstream Commerce, and $10.5 million for Bengaluru-based Liv.ai.
“The massive decline in expenditure is attributable to a steep decline in finance costs rather than any overall optimization in operating expenses.
Finance cost comprised a large part of FY18 expenditure, largely attributed to accounting treatment of convertible securities. If one were to exclude finance costs, overall group expenditure actually went up by 118%,” Vivek Durai, founder of data provider Paper.vc, said in the statement.
“Many expected a dip in Flipkart’s revenue, but it hasn’t happened,” he said over the telephone.
“Part of that, interestingly, is employee expenses—increase in salaries and employee base. A portion of it is also probably employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) expenditure, which has been allocated towards employee benefits.”
Flipkart competes with Amazon India in the e-commerce segment in India.