Shopclues is the flea market e-commerce website of India. It is considered fourth in a three horse race but claims to have cornered the tier two, three and four market. It broke into the $1 billion club in January and boasted that it had clocked a GMV of $1.5 billion in FY16. One of its founders, Sandeep Aggarwal, had to leave the company after he was arrested for insider trading. He since started Droom, a used car marketplace. The company has a colourful history, to say the least.

What has Shopclues been up to, in the last year?

Shopclues managed to keep itself in the news in FY16. It raised over $100 million from GIC and got into the unicorn club. Shopclues claimed to have raised its hiring game and got in top executives into its company. The company, in keeping with the times, also got itself a mobile wallet, which it hasn’t started using, according to sources. It set itself up for the big fight to come: taking over from Snapdeal and become the third biggest e-commerce company in the country, sources say. Shopclues also said it would break even by the end of 2016. And later said it would list as a public entity in 2017. Let’s see how they did.

Results

Rs 178.61 crore: Revenue Shopclues clocked in FY16. Over two-time increase in revenue after it clocked Rs 79.23 crore in FY15.

Rs 161.43 crore: Sales in FY16. The rest came from earnings from investments in mutual funds and its like.

Rs 23.26 crore: Revenue from foreign currency. Since Shopclues does not have operations outside the country, this is the revenue in exchange for services to its parent company in the United States of America.

Rs 236.82 crore: Spent on marketing and advertising to big up the brand in FY16. A four-time jump from FY15 where is spent Rs 57.93 crore.

Rs 61.80 crore: Salaries paid by Shopclues to its employees compared to Rs 23.14 crore in FY15. The company, seemingly, went on a hiring spree.

Rs 67.55 lakh: Salary CEO and co-founder Sanjay Sethi pays himself. Radhika Ghai Aggarwal, the chief business officer of the company, co-founder and wife of Sandeep, was paid Rs 88.55 lakh. She was paid Rs 44.84 lakh in FY15.

Rs 1 crore: Highest renumeration paid by the company. Curiously, it was not Sethi the CEO or Radhika the CBO but Vishal Sharma, VP, operations & strategic initiatives, ShopClues. He was paid Rs 57.35 lakh in FY15.

Rs 383.05 crore: Loss recorded by Shopclues in FY16, compared to Rs 101.37 crore in FY15, almost four-time jump. So, to double its revenue, Shopclues increased its losses four times. The break even marathon seems longer than it appears.

• ecommerce
• Radhika Aggarwal
• Sanjay Sethi
• Shopclues