homebusiness Newscompanies NewsPolicybazaar IPO: Parent firm PB Fintech to focus on growth, not profitability at EBITDA level
Policybazaar IPO: Parent firm PB Fintech to focus on growth, not profitability at EBITDA level
PB Fintech's whole-time director & CFO Alok Bansal said going forward the company's priority is going to be getting the best service levels to customers, creating awareness, and growing as fast as possible, given whatever constraints that may exist because of the external environment.
PB Fintech, the company that owns Policybazaar and Paisabazaar, is all set to launch its initial public offering (IPO) and raise funds through the public market route after 13 years of building the brand in the private sector space.
CNBC-TV18 caught up with PB Fintech’s chairman and chief executive officer Yashish Dahiya and whole-time director and chief financial officer Alok Bansal on the company's mega Rs 5,700 crore IPO and the businesses that lie ahead.
The company has aggressive plans of coming into the offline space and would be using about Rs 375 crore towards it. Talking about the contribution of the offline business to overall revenues, Dahiya said it would be a big component in the five-year timeframe. Though he did not put a percentage number to it, he said, it would be a significant component contributing not less than 10 percent.
Throwing light on the revenue contributions by Paisabazaar, Bansal said last year, in the first quarter there was a big impact of COVID-19 and then there was a lot of recovery until March 2021. However, then the second coronavirus wave struck and there were constraints on the supply and demand side as well.
Overall Paisabazaar went through a tough time in the last 15 months, he said, adding that it is witnessing a very good recovery now.
"We also ensure that we will get into some other associated verticals, which are not just commission-based verticals in terms of credit advisory, in terms of collections report to our partners. So, Paisabazaar is recovering but not yet where it was pre-COVID and hopefully, in another three months, it should be back to pre-COVID levels and then the recovery should start from there onwards,” he added.
Speaking about the overall business, Bansal said, for the first quarter Paisabazaar had a tough time. Since consolidated numbers are combined numbers, there was pressure on revenues because of Paisabazaar and that resulted in little higher costs because the company had already committed to some of the marketing expenses and service team costs, etc, he explained. He, however, added that there's nothing extraordinary and that it is a very short-term blip.
Going forward, the priority is going to be getting the best service levels to customers, creating awareness, and growing as fast as possible, given whatever constraints that may exist because of the external environment, Bansal said.
He added that PB Fintech is not overly focused on profitability at the EBITDA level right now. From a focus perspective, it wants to focus on growth, and that may require some investments once in a while, he said.
For the full interview, watch the video
(Edited by : Kanishka Sarkar)
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