BlackBuck Edges Closer To Unicorn Tag With 59% Jump In FY18 Revenue

Zinka Logistics Solutions Pvt Ltd-owned online marketplace for logistics, BlackBuck, has announced its financial results for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2018, reporting a 59% jump in its revenue to $128.3 Mn (INR 902 Cr) in FY18. The Bengaluru-based company is currently exploring ways to leverage its asset-light model and ecosystem approach.

According to financials sourced via business intelligence platform Tofler, the company has reported a loss of $16.6 Mn (INR 116.7 Cr), up 35% in the year. Meanwhile, the company’s expenses reached $144.8 Mn (INR 1,018 Cr) for FY18, a 56% jump as against $92.98 Mn (INR 653.6 Cr) in the previous year.

However, these figures, even though show positive growth, are much lower than 597% increase in its revenues and 425% jump in its losses for FY17 as well as a 570% jump from $13.6 Mn (INR 95.66 Cr) expenses in FY16. As Inc42 Datalabs noted in What The Financials series, the monumental growth in the fiscal year 2017 came because the company increased its portfolio of services and expanded its operations.

The significant rise in FY18 expenses showed some new trends:

• To increase the brand visibility, BlackBuck spent $88.2K (INR 62 Lakh) in advertising and promotional expenses in FY18, a 287% jump against $22.7K (INR 16 Lakh) in FY17
• For its more than 1,300 BlackBuckers, the company spent $8.45 Mn (INR 59.39 Cr), which includes the ESOPs the company announced in October 2017. Owing to this, the company increased the employee benefits expenses by 54% from $5.49 Mn (INR 38.65 Cr) in FY17.
• With the company choosing leasing of trucks instead of owning, its transportation cost for FY18 which reached $125 Mn (INR 880 Cr) includes freight cost of $122 Mn (INR 858.8 Cr) and cost of loading and unloading of $1.87 Mn (INR 13.2 Cr). The total cost jumped by 59% as compared to $78.63 Mn (INR 552.67 Cr) of FY17

BlackBuck earns about 15-20% commission for providing business to trucks it hires. It has truck services listed on its platform and does an intelligent match for customers, based on their requirements.

Founded in 2015 by Rajesh Yabaji, Chanakya Hridaya, and Rama Subramaniam, BlackBuck offers its services across more than 1,000 locations and also reaches and impacts over 2,000 villages in India.

Rajesh Yabaji had earlier told Inc42, “We work with 10,000+ shippers and 250,000+ trucks and use sophisticated machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms to track freight logistics data across India, and provide the best match-making (matching shipper and FO) at the best prices.”

As the company gets closer to joining the unicorn club, it’s major competition in the logistics industry, expected to reach $307 Bn by 2020, continues to be logistics unicorn Rivigo, 4tigo, Locus, LogiNext, LetsTransport, Delhivery, GoBOLT among others.