Will Dunzo ever make money?

Startups are defined by one of two things: Breakneck pace of growth or a sweet bottomline. While Dunzo may be trying hard, it is fumbling at both.

Nikhil Varma

Bengaluru

18 August 2020

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Three years. That’s the time Kabeer Biswas, co-founder and CEO of Dunzo, sees the hyperlocal logistics company taking to stop relying on external capital and start making money on its own.

Overly optimistic, from a quick look at the numbers. The latest financial statement, for the fiscal year ended 31 March 2019, and a valuation report dated 20 March show losses ballooning to Rs 332.4 crore in fiscal 2019-20, up from Rs 168 crore in 2018-19. That’s almost a crore a day. The report puts outstanding losses at nearly Rs 540 crore as per annualized figures. The filings also show Dunzo’s annualized expenditure during 2019-20 adding up to Rs 407.6 crore, a 2.3x rise from Rs 172 crore in 2018-19.

That’s some cash burn, right there.

The Bengaluru-headquartered company, though, is not short on recall. In the six years of its existence, it has managed to develop quite a fan base in the city of its birth. Almost anyone you run into in the traffic-snarled city talks

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