Online truck aggregator BlackBuck saw its losses increase by about 18% year-on-year (y-o-y) to Rs 285 crore in FY22 on the back of increasing employee benefit expenses, regulatory filings showed.

Increasing costs pushed up the company’s expenses by about 2% to Rs 1,154 crore, up from Rs 1,135 crore in FY21.

The Sequoia-backed startup saw its operating revenue drop by 4% to Rs 833 crore in FY22 from Rs 867 crore in FY21.

Also Read: Customers prefer touch-and-feel experience: For digital startups, omnichannel is the way forward

The marginal moves in the company’s financials indicated that the Rajesh Yabaji-led firm was yet to return to its pre-Covid levels when it was clocking a revenue of Rs 2,236 crore in FY20. In the same year, BlackBuck’s expenses amounted to Rs 2,742 crore and losses totalled Rs 452 crore.

In FY22, freight costs — the biggest expense for the company — got reduced to Rs 686 crore from Rs 797 crore in FY21, while employee benefit costs nearly doubled to Rs 235 crore from Rs 121 crore. The company also increased its advertising and promotional expenses to Rs 21 crore from Rs 0.42 crore in FY21.

Also Read: Startups opt for venture debt in funding winter

BlackBuck entered the unicorn club in July 2021 when it raised around $68 million from Tribe Capital, IFC Emerging Asia Fund and VEF at a valuation of over $1 billion. The investment, which was part of the company’s Series E financial round, also saw participation from existing investors Wellington Management, Sands Capital and International Finance Corporation.

Founded in 2015, BlackBuck digitises fleet operations for truckers and operates a marketplace to help match trucks with relevant loads. The platform has a network of more than 1.2 million trucks and over 700,000 truckers with monthly transactions totalling over 15 million, it had said earlier. The company that directly competes with players like Rivigo claims to drive more than 90% market share of all online trucking activity. It counts large corporates like Hindustan Unilever, Reliance and Coca Cola among its over 10,000 clients.