OneCard revenue grows 6-fold to Rs 97 crore in FY22; loss widens to Rs 183 crore

Temasek-backed fintech unicorn OneCard reported a six-fold rise in its FY22 (2021-22) revenue as demand for mobile-first credit cards soared during the year amid rapid adoption of digital services in the country.

FPL Technologies Pvt, which operates the credit-card platform, reported a revenue of Rs 97.9 crore in FY22 against Rs 16.4 crore a year back, the company’s filings with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) showed. OneCard reported an operating revenue of Rs 83.8 crore in FY22 against Rs 10.8 crore in FY21.

The company’s net loss, however, widened to Rs 182.8 crore in FY22 from Rs 33.2 crore in FY21 (2020-21), thanks to a massive rise in its marketing expenses. OneCard spent a little over Rs 124 crore on promotional expenses in FY22 as against Rs 11.8 crore in FY21. OneCard’s employee benefit costs also surged to Rs 43.2 crore in FY22 from Rs 13.6 crore in FY21.

For FY22, OneCard had a negative operating cash flow of Rs 308.7 crore, against Rs 51.4 crore in FY21, the filings showed. The company’s numbers were on a standalone basis. FY22 was OneCard’s third full year of operations.

Founded in February 2019 by Vibhav Hathi, Anurag Sinha and Rupesh Kumar, FPL Technologies is a digital lending fintech and has two products - OneCard and OneScore. OneCard is a Visa credit card offered in partnership with IDFC First Bank, Federal Bank, SBM Bank, among others.

OneScore was the startup’s first product which is a digital credit score platform offering free credit score checks and personalised insights with which customers can monitor and manage their credit health. The company launched the card in June 2020.

FPL has raised as much as $227 million in funding to date and besides Temasek, the company counts GIC, Matrix Partners, QED Innovation, Hummingbird Ventures, and Sequoia Capital, among others as its backers. The company joined the coveted unicorn club in July last year, when it raised its largest funding round of $102 million led by Temasek at a valuation of $1.32 billion. Besides institutions, the company also has 16 angels on its captable.

OneCard gained prominence over the last 18 months with the rising penetration of digital lending services and credit card platforms in India. However, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) cracked down on digital lending last year, hitting the likes of some of OneCard’s closest competitors including Tiger Global-backed Slice and Uni. Consequently, both Slice and Uni had to change their models to offer products like prepaid cards and early salary.

However, unlike Slice, Uni, and other BNPL (buy-now-pay-later) platforms, OneCard works on a revenue-sharing model with partner banks and so the credit risk sits with the banks and not with the company. OneCard, was thus not hit by RBI’s norms on digital lending. In an interview with Moneycontrol last year, Sinha had said that even as the company’s 70 percent of customers are in the age group of 23-30, its focus was not on new-to-credit customers, unlike that of Slice.