While the spotlight has been on the two major online food order delivery startups, Swiggy and Zomato in terms of cash burn, Foodpanda has been burning much more cash. Foodpanda is backed by cab aggregator Ola. The figures now available through the company’s filings with the Registrar of Companies for FY18 indicates that Foodpanda could clock up a revenue of just less than Rs 82 crore for the full year while its expenses were a whopping Rs 838.20 crore. Losses stood at Rs 756.42 crore.
While these figures on a standalone basis itself look staggering, the comparison with the previous year is more astonishing. The revenue figures increased by as little as 12.72% in FY19 whereas the losses jumped by 231.83%, from around Rs 228 crore to Rs 756.42 crore.
The answers for this huge escalation in the loss figures is available from the rest of the financial figures sourced from RoC and shared by Tofler, a business intelligence platform.
Foodpanda has been heavily discounting on its food delivery app. The expenses of the firm shot up from Rs 162.64 in 2018-19 to Rs 838.20 crore, a jump of 415.37%. Of this amount, Rs 267 crore was due to delivery charges and Rs 137 crore on account of the discounts offered to customers. It is pointed out that this ratio of Rs 137 crore discount on a revenue of Rs 81.31 crore is considered too high.
There has not been any direct comment from Foodpanda or Ola on these figures. The company’s CEO Jivarajka is reported to have said they are trying to reposition Foodpanda into a ‘food-first’ company from being a food delivery company.
There are reports that the startup is trying turn its focus to operating as a cloud kitchen rather than acting as a pureplay food delivery operation.
Swiggy and Zomato, despite their high levels of burns have been able to raise finds from the investors easily so far, with Swiggy getting up to $1.5 billion and Zomato $800 million.