Online grocery platform Grofers (1) has advanced its plan to launch an initial public offer by the end of next year as the company saw a rise in its profits during the lockdown, a top official of the company said.
Albinder Dhindsa, co-founder and CEO at Grofers, said that the company started making an operational profit in January and expects to become cash positive by the end of this year.
Albinder added,
“Our path to profitability has accelerated during the lockdown, and after achieving operational profitability in January, we are on track to become EBITDA and cash positive by the end of this year. We are observing market sentiments and aim to hit the capital market by the end of 2021.”
The company earlier had plans to go public in 2022.
The company closed the financial year with a revenue of around Rs2500 crore, & the valuation of Grofers is estimated to be close to Rs6000 crore.
Dhindsa said that as an organization, Grofers have always channeled their efforts towards providing value to their customers and would continue to do so by staying true to their brand’s promise of low prices through their focus on building an efficient supply chain and technology-driven innovations.
Surging demand for Grofers
As per the firm’s data, Grofers has shipped over 4.4 crore products last month, seen a 99.7% accuracy since the lockdown started, and claims to have served over 42 lakh households by the end of May.
Dhindsa added that Grofers is seeing a continuous rise in demand and expect this to stabilize at 30% higher than pre-COVID levels.
There has also been a 40% increase in basket size and 64% increase first-time online grocery shoppers and 15 percent first time online shoppers.
Grofers has opened up over five new facilities and looks to add 1-15 facilities in total by the end of this year. The platform has also started helping their manufacturing partners with logistics, working capital, and distribution to meet with the rising demand.
The company has also hired over 3,000 people for their supply chain and plan to hire over 2,000 people for warehouses and delivery staff.
