123Greetings' revenues rise 78% to Rs 51.68Cr; margins sink in Q3

Intrasoft Technologies, which owns and operates the e-greeting cards and e-com site 123greetings.com, has reported 78 per cent growth in revenues for the quarter ended December 31, 2013, driven by an overall increase in its product shipments.

The revenues for the quarter stood at Rs 51.68 crore, compared with Rs 29.02 crore last year. Operating EBITDA for the quarter decreased by two-thirds to Rs 1.16 crore compared with Rs 3.23 crore in the corresponding quarter last year. Net profit crashed to just Rs 15.29 lakh from Rs 82.38 lakh in Q3 of FY13.

"With the continued growth in our e-commerce business, the revenue in the current quarter has increased by 78 per cent compared with the corresponding quarter last year. We have continued to increase our investments in the e-commerce business through automation of various processes and increasing the team size. While, this has kept the margins under pressure, we are confident of reporting higher revenues and profits in the subsequent quarters," said managing director Arvind Kajaria.

Intrasoft is one of the three public-listed internet firms in India (the other two being Just Dial and Info Edge India, owner of Naukri.com). It generates revenues primarily from online advertising and online retail sales.

123Greetings.com offers over 42,000 e-cards across multiple languages covering a mix of 3,000 seasonal & everyday categories. The firm claims to have 95 million annual visitors. It also offers a feature called, Connect, which enables users to actively manage their expressions to both personal and professional contacts. It also operates 123Greetings Studio, a platform for artists to upload and monetise their own e-cards.

Key operating numbers

123Greetings Store shipped 88,348 orders during the quarter, averaging approximately 1,821 orders per day compared with 560 orders per day last year.

As on December 31, 2013, 123Greetings Store's product catalogue had 123,111 products, which were listed at 526,621 places across its website & other marketplaces. 123Greetings Store had an active base of 881 vendors compared with 389 vendors in the corresponding quarter last year.

Around 77.26 lakh visitors accessed 123Greetings' website via handheld devices compared with 36.66 lakh last year, with traffic more than doubling in a year.

123Greetings launched its mobile & tablet apps on iOS and Android platforms. During the quarter over 70,000 e-cards were sent using apps by our users.

123Greetings strengthened its technology and content delivery capabilities to serve its mobile website and apps users enabling over 40,000 e-cards, including flash e-cards, to be viewable on hand-held devices.

123Greetings Studio, the content crowd-sourcing platform, delivered 1,682 additional e-cards during the quarter, compared with 671 last year.

123Greetings e-cards business increased its addressable market by growing its regional language content library with 118 new e-cards across Russian, Mandarin, Spanish, German and Hindi for key holidays and occasions.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)