 "Manoj Gupta, Craftsvilla.com")
Sequoia Capital- and Nexus Venture Partners-backed online ethnic store Craftsvilla expects to turn profitable in 2017 as it expands its business to offer local food products to customers across the country.
In February, Craftsvilla acquired Bengaluru-based PlaceofOrigin, an online marketplace for Indian snacks and sweets from producers across India which sells them to consumers on its platform.
"We are a very capital efficient company and we are looking to become profitable in a few months, in next year. Our charter of growth is profitability, unit economics, capital efficiency, cost of financials, GMV (gross merchandise volume) and others," said Manoj Gupta, co-founder, Craftsvilla. It is also looking at expanding to overseas market, with an aim to offer ethnic apparel to expatriates and home products, Ayurvedic products and others to local customers.
Craftsvilla, founded in 2011, had joined other e-commerce firms to spend heavily on offering discounts and building its brand to reach out to consumers across India.
As the industry shifted its models to become more capital efficient, Gupta, and his wife and co-founder Monica Gupta, increased focus on improving efficiency and move towards profitability.
"Last year we focused a lot on scale of the revenue and we were not profitable. This year we are completely focused on a decent growth, but very healthy bottom line. The matrix revolves more on bottom line now rather than top line growth. Next year, once we achieve profitability, we would again start to ramp up our sale," Gupta said.
The company has five million ethnic products on its platform, and 80 per cent of its sales happen in ethnic fashion. About 60 per cent of the sales happen in Tier II, III towns and 80 per cent are women customers. The average order value is around Rs 1,400. However, Gupta refused to reveal revenue or GMV numbers.
Craftsvilla said it will target fivefold business growth once it turns profitable.
In February, this year, the company had entered into sales of ethnic food business and had also started a logistics business. The food business is growing very fast and has already been near profitable for the company. It offers ethnic local food and has a reach of 10,000 PIN Codes at present, Gupta said.
Overall, it serves more than 20,000 PIN codes now. The company says that its future plan is to become India's largest ethnic brand, in food, fashion, home products, handicrafts, fashion etc, and to be bigger than some of the competitors like Fab India, Manyavar and others.
It has raised over $54.5 million from investors, according to Crunchbase data, which includes funding from Sequoia Capital, Nexus Venture Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners. It is currently not looking at fund raising, added Gupta. Ends
