Grofers India Pvt Ltd, that owns hyperlocal grocery startup Grofers.com, has reported a whopping loss of Rs 225 crore and a revenue of Rs 14.3 crore in the fiscal year 2016.

The financials of FY 16 are not comparable to FY 15 as Grofers India Pvt Limited is a new entity or company formed in June 2015. Before that Grofers.com was owned by Locodel Solutions Pvt Ltd, promoted by founder Albinder Dhindsa and Saurabh Kumar. According to its filing with Registrar of Companies (RoC), Locodel transferred its entire business to Grofers India Pvt. Ltd following a share sale. Both the companies have common board of directors.

According to data sourced from business research platform Tofler, Locodel Solutions had filed its annual numbers for FY 16 on RoC, where the company has posted a net loss of Rs 60.87 crore, 15 times more than Rs 3.9 crore in FY 15. Total expenses of the company surged to Rs 61.45 crore from Rs 4.77 crore, according to Tofler data, which says that the revenues fell by 32 per cent at Rs 58.34 lakh from Rs 86.38 lakh the previous year.

Grofers, founded in 2013, describes itself as a company that allows users to order grocery, electronic goods and other products online. The company has so far raised about $200 million so far from SoftBank, Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital amongst other investors.

In the year 2016, the company has spend close to Rs 236 crore to fuel its rapid expansion activity and customer acquisitions. However, the high cash burn led to the company getting into a consolidation mode and pulled off its operations in about nine cities citing the reason that the business was not viable and the markets were not mature enough to order grocery online.

It also carried out a massive restructuring of its business and laid off about 100 employees as a part of that. Last year was generally not a good year for online grocery, delivery and food portals wherein several companies like PepperTap, LocalBanya, Eatlo, Tinyowl among 20 more companies folding up.

Meanwhile, Grofers biggest competitor at present is Bengaluru-based BigBasket, operated by Bengaluru-based SuperMarket Grocery Supplies Pvt Ltd. BigBasket’s revenue for FY 16 , however, has tripled to Rs 563 crore. But the losses have also increased to Rs 277 crore from Rs 61 crore in FY 15. Going forward, Grofers is likely to face another major competitor Amazon Now, which is slowly and steadily expanding its operations.

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