Unicorn classifieds’ start-up, Quikr all set to step into black

The verticalisation strategy of unicorn classifieds’ start-up, Quikr is paying off with three of its five business categories turning profitable .

Quikr which attracts about 30 million unique users a month, generated about $50 million in annualised cash revenue on a year-on-year growth of 80 per cent during the second half of calendar year, 2018. “Our revenue this fiscal has grown 115 per cent over last year and we will get to overall profitability in much less than six months. Our expenses have been flat in the last 12 months while revenue continues to grow, hence the cash burn has reduced automatically,” Pranay Chulet, CEO, Quikr told BusinessLine .

Valued at $1.6 billion when it acquired HDFC Red and HDFC Realty last February, Quikr has evolved from a pure play classifieds platform into a complete solutions provider with delivery of transactions, therefore, completing the loop for users.

Chulet said real estate, cars & bikes and jobs are the three profitable categories. The other two – goods and household services are in investment mode. Jobs turned profitable a year ago, while real estate and car & bikes became profitable six months ago.

The break-even profitability is driven by the fact that over 95 per cent of the traffic comes from unpaid sources and efficient channelling of the user base to cross-sell across categories and into transactional models, according to Georgi Ganev, CEO of Kinnevik AB, a Swedish investment firm which owns 17 per cent stake in Quikr.

Chulet is pretty confident of exceeding the previously targeted revenue of ₹350 crore for FY 2019. He expects the company to rake in ₹50 crore in revenue next month, taking its annualised revenue for March 2019 to ₹600 crore which is more than double its ₹240 crore annualised revenue in April. About 45 per cent of Quikr’s revenue comes from Classifieds and 55 per cent from Transactions.

Quikr’s consolidated revenue from operations has nearly doubled to ₹173.49 crore in FY 2018 compared with the previous year, as per company filings accessed by paper.vc. Its losses have dropped nearly 28 per cent to ₹233.28 in FY 2018 for the same period.

“Our cash collections are far higher than RoC reported filings, at ₹110.78 crore in FY 2017 and ₹197.85 crore in FY 2018, because we have a pre-paid fee structure and get upfront payments than what will show in accounting terms as revenue” explained Chulet. Quikr has raised $350 million in equity and $8 million in debt so far and is backed by Tiger Global, Kinnevik, Warburg Pincus, Matrix Partners India, Norwest Venture Partners, NGP Capital, Steadview Capital, Omidyar Network etc.

The company has made 14 acquisitions to date that have synergies with its five vertical businesses. About 50 per cent of the revenue comes from Quikr’s original business where there has been no acquisition, such as in Auto, Goods, Services (except for Beauty) and some part of Real Estate; 15 per cent is from its acquisitions based on the revenue they had when acquired and 35 per cent comes from the synergies with Quikr.

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