Tata Industries reports Rs 2,043 crore loss on Tata Unistore sale

Tata Cliq portal was sold to Tata Digital in December last year

Tata Industries, the unlisted subsidiary of Tata Sons, has incurred a massive loss of Rs 2,043 crore in the fiscal year ending March 2023 on the sale of its 97 stake in Tata Unistore Ltd, a retail e-commerce portal, to Tata Digital Pvt Ltd.

As per company filings, Tata Industries sold Tata Unistore Ltd, which operated under the brand of Tata CLiQ, to Tata Digital Pvt, in December last year while Trent Ltd, another group firm, sold its 3 per cent stake in the company. 

Tata Digital, a Tata Sons subsidiary, operates the super-app, Tata Neu, and has consolidated all e-commerce sites of Tata group's consumer facing businesses under one umbrella. Tata Neu has grocery e-commerce site Big Basket, electronics site, Chroma and medical products seller, Tata 1MG under one super app. Tata Digital had launched the super app in April last year with an ambitious idea to take on Amazon and Flipkart to sell the group's diverse offerings and products under one Super app.

Tata Digital, however, failed to meet its sales targets of $8 billion for the fiscal 2023 and ended the year with $4 billion sales. The Tata group now plans to invest fresh capital of $2 billion into the company over the next two years, Bloomberg reported in April this year.

Tata group declined to comment.

As per the filings, in the fiscal 2023 Tata Industries, which invests in incubating new business ventures, reported revenues of Rs 258 crore as compared to Rs 140 crore of revenues reported in the year ending March 2022. The loss for the fiscal 2022 was Rs 717 crore (See chart).

TIL has holdings in listed entities of the Tata group with its exposure highest in Tata Motors. The company had cash and equivalents of about Rs 188 crore and debt of Rs 1,619 crore as on March 31, 2023. Bankers say as the company has strong access to capital from its parent Tata Sons, and hence it will not have any problem raising funds in the future to invest in new ventures.

In fiscal 2023, TIL also raised external borrowing to support its joint ventures/subsidiaries and/ or to fund losses from its investments, resulting in debt increasing to Rs 1,619 crore as on March 31, 2023, from Rs 1,141 crore as on March 31, 2022.

Tata Industries: Financials in a nutshell

                       2023                     2022
 

Revenue:   Rs 258 cr                  Rs 140 cr

Loss:          Rs 2071 cr                Rs 717 cr

Source: Company filings