Fashion marketplace Voonik turns profitable as expenses continued to narrow YoY; revenue up 109%

Fashion e-commerce marketplace Voonik, which merged its B2B business and technology platform with Bangladesh’s social commerce platform ShopUp and spun off its B2C single-brand retail vertical with Bengaluru-based schooling supplies startup Schoolay earlier this year, has turned profitable. The company reported climbing out of red from Rs 17.63 crore in losses during FY19 to Rs 28.90 crore in net profit for FY20 – a 264 per cent jump, according to regulatory filing sourced from business intelligence platform Tofler. The revenues were up 109 per cent from Rs 21.45 crore to Rs 44.76 crore during the said period. The company crossed the bottom-line milestone on the back continuous decline in expenses.

Since FY17, Voonik was able to cut its expenses by 93 per cent and 59 per cent from FY19 to Rs 15.99 crore in FY20. Its expenses declined from Rs 247 crore in FY17 to Rs 113 crore in FY18 and further by a significant margin to Rs 39 crore in FY19. The majority chunk of expenses included Rs 5 crore in employee benefit expenses, Rs 3.82 crore for purchases of stock in trade, Rs 3.16 crore in legal professional charges, Rs 1.1 crore in transportation distribution expenses, and Rs 59.3 lakh ad promotional expenses.

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“After substantial investment in the planned business project of the company, the Seventh financial year of operations closed with an operational profit of Rs 28,90,92,892/-. The Directors are optimistic about the company’s business and hopeful of better performance with increased revenue in next year,” the company said in its filing. Voonik has so far raised $34.5 million funding across five rounds with the latest Series C round of $6 million in February 2017, according to Crunchbase.

India’s online fashion segment is expected to grow from $4.8 billion in GMV in FY19 to $19 billion in FY24 amid a majority share of 54 per cent cornered by the apparel segment followed by 26 per cent coming from the footwear vertical and 20 per cent from accessories, according to a Redseer analysis. The private label brands have been able to make fashion more affordable for customers and it has led to more traction on platforms like Myntra and others. Currently, Walmart’s Myntra dominates the online fashion segment that has players including Amazon, LimeRoad, FabAlley, and others.