In the last financial year (FY22-23), Noida-headquartered e-commerce company IndiaMART InterMESH Ltd added about 32,000 or 33,000 customers, which was the highest ever in its history, said Dinesh Agarwal, Founder and CEO of IndiaMART.
"Our anticipation was at the pre-COVID level, but churns are a little bit higher than what was expected. And that is resulting into lower customer addition for the past three quarters. Mostly it should be bottomed out at 2,000 customers per quarter. And as I said earlier\ also, it will take us two to three quarters to find reasons and fix because these are small things," Agarwal said.
The IndiaMART CEO further said the good part is that gold and platinum customers continue to pay the company higher revenue, and they continue to upgrade. Their revenue contribution is close to 75%. And they contribute about 50% of the total customer base.
Speaking about a growth in collections, Agarwal said after many quarters of upwards of 20-25% collection growth, this is the first quarter that the company has witnessed the 17% rate — I would still say that it's a one off.
"As we have always maintained that we want to remain at 20%-plus growth rate company more towards 25%. Since the customer growth has muted there could be some reasons for that. Also, October, November, December have more holiday days. That's how it should also be read. We would like to maintain that at least for now. We would be targeting 20% upwards of the collection growth," he added.
IndiaMART on Thursday (January 16) reported lower paying subscribers in the third quarter compared to the previous quarter. Net addition of paying subscribers in the December quarter stood at 1,826 compared to 2,064 during the September quarter, IndiaMart said in a filing.
For the December quarter, IndiaMART reported a net profit of ₹82 crore, down from ₹112.8 crore in the year-ago period, due to significant decline in other income. On a sequential basis, the net profit has risen 18.6% from ₹69 crore in the previous September quarter.
The Noida-headquartered company's revenue from operations jumped 21.5% to ₹305 crore for the reporting period. It was ₹251 crore in the corresponding period of last year.
Operating profit, known as EBITDA, rose 22.4% to ₹85.9 crore, while margins were flat at 28% on-year for the December quarter.
The company also recorded a significant decline in other income at ₹41.7 crore from ₹102 crore in the same quarter a year ago.
Shares of IndiaMART InterMESH Ltd closed 5.88% higher at ₹2,635.
