IPO-bound FirstCry’s FY23 revenue doubles to Rs 5,632 crore; loss shoots up six times

Omnichannel retailer FirstCry saw its operating revenue for the year ended March 2023 more than double year on year to Rs 5,632 crore even as its total loss shot up more than six times to Rs 486 crore.

The public markets-bound firm had made operating revenue of Rs 2,401 crore in FY22 when it incurred a total loss of Rs 78.6 crore, according to regulatory filings sourced from business intelligence platform Tofler.

The majority of FirstCry's operating revenue came through sale of products at Rs 5,519 crore.


The Pune-based firm’s total expenses were at Rs 6,315 crore in FY23, a jump of nearly 150% compared to Rs 2,568 crore a year ago.

FirstCry sells products for mothers and babies through online channels and physical stores. It operates around 1,000 retail stores in India, and also has an ecommerce roll up subsidiary called Globalbees.

Purchase of stock was the firm’s largest cost component in FY23 at Rs 3,117 crore, up from Rs 1,754 crore spent a year earlier. Employee benefit expenses stood at Rs 769 crore, up from Rs 338 crore. The firm spent Rs 416 crore in advertising and promotions and another Rs 429 crore in logistics costs in FY23.

ET first reported on December 19 that FirstCry is expected to file its draft IPO papers this week. The company is aiming to raise $500-600 million through the public offering.

While the company has not announced a valuation for the IPO, people in the know told ET it could be in the range of $4 billion. FirstCry was last valued at just under $3 billion.

ET reported on December 25 that the largest shareholder in the firm, SoftBank Vision Fund had sold additional shares in the company, taking the total secondary share sale in the firm ahead of its planned public listing next year to more than Rs 1,000 crore.

In a secondary share sale, existing investors sell their stake in part or full to new investors. The company itself does not get any capital from this.

Family offices of cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, Ravi Modi of ethnic wear brand Manyavar, Infosys cofounder Kris Gopalakrishnan, and the TVS group family had bought into the firm as part of its latest share sale.

FirstCry is set to be the second Indian vertical ecommerce platform to go public after Nykaa’s IPO in 2021. It may join a growing number of Indian new-economy firms to file draft IPO papers this month, following office space provider Awfis and electric vehicle firm Ola Electric, both of which filed their draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) last week.