Unilever Ventures-backed online grocery company Milkbasket is expected to close FY18 with a three-fold jump in revenues at about Rs 40 crore, Milkbasket co-founder and CEO Anant Goel told FE. The e-grocery firm reported revenues of Rs 10 crore in FY17. Losses too are expected to increase 166% to Rs 8 crore in FY18 from Rs 3 crore in FY17. The hyper-local e-commerce company, which competes with the likes of Grofers, BigBasket and Amazon Now, clocks about 1,70,000-1,80,000 orders a month with an average ticket size of Rs 180. According to the company, it currently delivers grocery and other items to 9,000 households in Gurgaon. “Most of the e-grocery firms simply replicated the brick-and-mortar model online when they started to sell grocery items. Under this, these firms wanted consumers to stock up grocery from them. We on the other hand have positioned ourselves as a top-up option, allowing consumers to buy anything right from milk, eggs, bread to a Parle-G biscuit pack priced at just `5,” Goel added. The company currently delivers to certain pockets in Gurgaon. Further, it delivers only once a day — at 7 am.
With the e-grocery company generating 95% repeat orders, its cost of customer acquisition is about `250 per new consumer. According to Goel, the increase in losses is due to the company investing in human resource and technology. Milkbasket plans to hire about 2,000 staffers in FY19. “Of this, 100 employees would be corporate staffers including engineers, while about 200 employees would be hired in middle management. We plan to hire about 1,000 semi-skilled workers and about 500 supervisor,” Goel explained. At present the company employees about 300 staffers.
It should be noted that Milkbasket raised $3 million in a pre-Series A round led by Unilever Ventures, the investment arm of FMCG giant Unilever Plc, in January. The company plans to use the fresh funds to expand its services in Gurgaon. Additionally, it plans to open a new warehouse to stock up items. Milkbasket at present has one warehouse in Gurgaon of 15,000 sq feet. “We will first start by expanding services within Gurgaon and then to other cities,” he said.