#IndianStartupData : Nuvo Logistics (PepperTap) Made A Profit Of INR 87 lac With A Revenue of INR 19.6cr in FY 14-15

[Editor Notes : Nothing is as powerful as data and these articles are part of our coverage of #IndianStartupData – i.e. an overview of financial performance of selected Indian startups with a belief that it gives the audience a good picture of the companies and the ecosystem in general.]

Pepper Tap is an on-demand grocery delivery service based in Gurgaon, India. It is owned and operated by Nuvo Logistics Private Limited and was incorporated in August 2013. Nuvo Logistics also owns and operates Nuvo Ex which provides reverse logistics services to e-commerce players.

Note that the below numbers are not of PepperTap alone, but of Nuvo logistics (i.e. the combined entity).

The company reported a total revenue of INR 19.5 crores in FY 14-15 with a net profit of INR 87 lacs. This was only their second year of operation. In FY 13-14, the company had registered a total revenue of INR 61 lacs with net loss of 41 lacs.

All of their revenue from operations is recognized from sale of services. Almost all of it is reported as ‘Courier Service fees’ with a miniscule amount reported as ‘Platform and logistic services’. A major proportion of this revenue must be attributable to Nuvo Ex since PepperTap had not started its operations before November 2014.

There is no clarity on the revenue split between the two companies.
FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE

In comparison, Grofers (one of its biggest competitor) had reported a revenue of INR 86 lacs with a loss of INR 4 crores in the same period. Another competitor Zop Now, which operates on an inventory based model, reported a revenue (all of it from sale of goods) of INR 8.8 crores with a net loss of INR 3.7 crores in the same period. Big Basket is another major competitor of PepperTap in this space and are yet to release their numbers.

Out of a total expenses of INR 18.4 Cr in FY 14-15, almost half of it was incurred on Employee benefit. Transportation and handling charges accounted for 21% of their total expense. Surprisingly, marketing and business promotion expense remained low at less than 4% of total expenses.

FOUNDERS

Nuvo Logistics started as a logistics e-commerce company. It was founded by Navneet Singh and Milind Sharma, both of them working with Delhivery prior to founding Nuvo. They started operations with Nuvo Ex, which provides reverse logistics services to e-com players and later conceptualized PepperTap and launched its operations in November 2014. Nuvo Ex is still operational (http://www.nuvoex.com/).

FUNDING

First institutional investment in the company came from Sequoia Capital in December 2014 (nearly 1.5 years after company formation), followed shortly by SAIF Partners. Snapdeal (an e-commerce company) is also heavily invested into the company.

Following is a summary of their major funding rounds so far:

While the industry is trying to figure out the better model out of inventory based model and the marketplace hyperlocal model, giants like Ola, Flipkart, Amazon and Paytm are also beginning to delve into the space.Although it belongs to the newer crop of players, PepperTap has emerged as one of the front-runners in the space of online groceries delivery. They had added features like number disguising and order modification on their app few months back and acquired Jiffstore, a Bangalore based grocery hyperlocal delivery startup last month.

In a very recent development, Grofers recently shut their operations in 9 Tier-2 cities saying that smaller cities are not ready for hyperlocal business yet.

[About the author: Vishal and Anchal form the team that runs the Tofler blog. They like to explore and track companies, their performance and senior management. Tofler (tofler.in) is a Business Research Platform.]