Flipkart’s board, during a meeting last week, asked Chief Executive Officer Kalyan Krishnamurthy to slash the Walmart-owned e-commerce giant’s monthly cash burn by about half, as the company gears up for a potential public listing in India and explores shifting its holding entity from Singapore to India, people aware of the developments told Moneycontrol.
The Walmart-owned firm currently burns around $40 million (about Rs 340 crore) each month, and the board wants CEO Krishnamurthy to reduce that to about $20 million (around Rs 170 crore) over the coming quarters to make the business more frugal, one of the people cited above said on condition of anonymity.
Cash burn is the rate at which companies, especially startups and new-age firms, spend their capital to fund business operations. It is a critical metric to determine the health of companies that are not yet profitable, as it indicates how long they can sustain operations before needing an additional round of funding. The lower the burn, the better the health.
CEO Krishnamurthy has been tasked to cut the company’s cash burn to around $250 million a year, at a time when Flipkart has to become more aggressive with new business units, especially Flipkart Minutes, its quick-commerce arm.
Flipkart did not reply to questions sent by Moneycontrol on April 21.
The company earlier said it will open 500 new dark stores over the coming eight months, a plan that will require it to spend heavily. Dark store expansion is also the need of the hour for Flipkart if it wants to become a serious player in India’s red-hot rapid delivery industry.
Flipkart Minutes competes with Zomato’s Blinkit, Zepto, Swiggy Instamart, Tata BigBasket and others.
With a mandate to lower costs on the one hand and a task of becoming a formidable quick-commerce player on the other, it remains to be seen what CEO Krishnamurthy chooses as he looks to steer the company towards an initial public offering (IPO).
“Flipkart has already been taking some tough decisions. A few months ago, it shut its pharmacy business (Flipkart Health+) and has been downsizing other non-core businesses. Now, going forward, Kalyan has to decide which unit continues to receive money and which ones will face the axe,” one of the persons cited above told Moneycontrol.
For context, Flipkart’s monthly cash burn of $40 million, or about Rs 340 crore, compares with over Rs 250 crore, or more than $30 million, that Zepto, its new-age rival, was burning, as reported by Moneycontrol earlier.
Flipkart, however, was at a much larger scale, clocking a gross merchandise value (GMV) of over $29 billion compared to Zepto’s $5 billion.
At the same time, it also improved the financial health of one of the key arms. Flipkart Internet, the company’s marketplace arm, witnessed a 21 percent year-over-year revenue growth in FY24, reaching Rs 17,907.3 crore.
At the same time, the company's losses declined 41 percent to Rs 2,358 crore, signalling improved financial performance on the back of a rise in revenues from the advertising business.
Flipping back
Flipkart’s board – which includes CEO Krishnamurthy himself, Lydia Jett, a former managing partner for SoftBank Vision Fund, HDFC’s Keki Mistry and other Walmart executives, including Dan Bartlett, executive vice president, corporate affairs, Walmart Inc – also expressed its intention to flip the company’s base back to India from Singapore.
A shift of its domicile will help Flipkart advance towards its goal of eventually listing on the Indian stock exchanges at a later point in time. On April 21, a Flipkart spokesperson, in a media statement, said the company intends to flip from Singapore to India but did not provide more details.
The developments, of a mandate to bring down its burn and even of an ongoing process of flipping back, come shortly after Flipkart raised $350 million from Google, as part of larger $950 million round, in what was its first external fundraise in several years especially after it came under Walmart’s fold in 2018.
Once complete, Flipkart will join the likes of Razorpay, Pine Labs, Zepto, and Meesho -- all of which are startups that are either in the advanced stages of flipping their base back to India or have already done so in the recent months.
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