By Kunal Bahl, Snapdeal
Last month, during a dinner with business leaders from traditional sectors like cement, textiles, hospitality, etc, the discussion veered towards the soaring losses of digital businesses and whether this was on account of “spray & pray” optimism about a fortune to be made down the road.
In the preceding weeks, a small number of Internet firms had together reported losses worth ₹11,000 crore. One firm had managed to increase net losses ninefold within the year. And hence this conversation was topical.
Losses have become the dominant theme for most Internet businesses in India — with growth potential, land grab, intense competition and the willingness of deep-pocketed investors to play for the long-term, offered as explanation.
However, the rising swell of losses in Indian Internet businesses masks some interesting questions.Are all losses the same? Are all these losses inevitable? Are there good losses vs. bad losses?
Digital businesses invest in technology, in creating peer networks (buyers and sellers), supply chain linkages, data-analytical capabilities, marketing and human capital. This is not very different from traditional businesses investing in production technology, physical infrastructure (land, factories, and office buildings), marketing and human capital. These investments, while leading to initial losses, help create long-termvalue.
However,losses on account of continuing negative unit economics do not create any economic value for the enterprise. Unit economics refers to the margin a business makes on each unit of product or service soldafter factoring all variable expenses associated with servicing that order. In other words, a business with negative unit economics is paying its consumers to use its product/service.
Acquiring customers by burning money and hyper-growth fueled by discounts create arbitrage and opportunity for savvy shoppers and suppliers, but not lasting customer value or network effects. Some examples of negative unit economics are direct discounting of the product — cab rides at 25% less than cost, ₹10,000 off on a phone, a hotel room at 40% off, etc.
Fulfillment losses are another recurrent theme — a user pays a fraction of the cost required to ship an ecommerce packet. More ways to convince the undecided include cashbacks through wallets and exchange offers. Similar is the case on the supply side — minimum guarantees to drivers of cab aggregator apps and no-cost returns to sellers for ecommerce shipments.
The key issue for these losses on account of operating inefficiencies is not the quantum, but the unwillingness to address them. For instance, losses on account of logistics can be reduced by resizing packages, renegotiating better rates with courier partners, moving shipments by surface transport rather than air, altering choice of packaging materials, and revising shipment charges levied to users, among others.
However, calculations in many digital businesses go like this: a shipment costs ₹400 to deliver and if I charge more than ₹100, my customers will leave me. So, I will lose ₹300 per shipment. Hence, what quantum of sales do I need to achieve so that I can find new investors to fund this loss.
The overarching desire to attract more funds also leads to creation of vanity metrics like Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) in ecommerce companies, number of orders in food delivery companies and transaction volume in payment companies. The correct indicator for any business is the money it makes — real revenuesandmargins.
Truth be told,it is a lot of hardwork to build things the right way. The most important part in stemming losses is the conviction of saying no to throwing money at all problems, saying no to users who won’t pay for your services and saying no to kicking the can down the street when it comes to tough calls. While it may appear that different yard sticks may be relevant for digital businesses,the world of Internet is no different from traditional enterprises, in that, all businesses have to make money.
Speaking as somebody who has lived through a lot of what is described above, there is no greater wrong than not fixing a problem, once you have understood the issue. Appreciating the varying shades of red presents a compelling landscape for change for India’s digital businesses that aim to build enduring enterprises.
(Kunal Bahl is the co-founder of online marketplace Snapdeal)
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