FreshMenu’s revenue growth slows in FY18, losses rise marginally

Bengaluru-based Foodvista India Pvt. Ltd, which operates online food delivery platform FreshMenu, has seen its revenue grow 72% but losses increased only marginally for the financial year ended March 2018, its filings with the Registrar of Companies show.

The company’s standalone revenue from operations for 2017-18 was Rs 122.3 crore, up from Rs 70.9 crore in 2016-17.

In 2016-17, FreshMenu’s revenue grew by 121% as compared to 2015-16 when it registered net sales of Rs 31.6 crore.

For 2017-18, the company posted net loss of Rs 43.8 crore, marginally up from Rs 42.3 crore in the previous financial year.

The firm’s total expenditure stood at Rs 167.6 crore in 2017-18, up from Rs 118.3 crore in the previous year.

Employee expenses rose to Rs 44.1 crore in 2017-18 from Rs 33 crore in 2016-17.

Email queries sent to FreshMenu on Thursday night, seeking comments, did not elicit a reply at the time of publishing this report.

Last month, a media report said that FreshMenu was in talks with private equity players such as TPG Capital, Temasek Holdings, General Atlantic and Kedaara Capital to raise up to $75 million.

A FreshMenu spokesperson told TechCircle at the time, "Regarding the news on funding, the conversations are on and we will be making an official statement once things are finalised.”

In November last year, Bennett Coleman & Co. Ltd, the publisher of The Times of India and The Economic Times, had invested Rs 1.65 crore ($255,613) in the company, RoC filings had shown.

In 2016, FreshMenu secured $17 million (around Rs 110 crore then) in a Series B funding round led by Zodius Technology Fund.

In 2015, it raised $5 million in a Series A round from Lightspeed Venture Partners.

In September this year, TechCircle had reported that a number of top executives had quit the firm, including Pradeep Desai, the chief business and technology officer, Anita Menon, the human resources head and Aparna Mahesh, the firm’s chief marketing officer. Besides these, Sagar Bhalotia, director of new initiatives, and Ramesh May, chief product officer, had also resigned.

Founded in 2014 by IIM-Ahmedabad alumnus Rashmi Daga, FreshMenu prepares meals and delivers from its own kitchen facilities. It operates on a cloud-kitchen model, where it brings on board chefs to its centralised kitchens to prepare the food and delivers only online. In this model, the firm controls the brand, tech infrastructure and logistics in order to achieve profitability. Though it runs its operations only online, last year, it opened a restaurant in Bengaluru for dine-in and takeout.