In what could be a good case study for ecommerce giants headed south, “Improved inventory management, better warehousing capacity and subsequently putting in place the growth engines have helped Urban Ladder sustain the stagnation period among startups,” according to its Senior Vice President — Customer Operation and Retail Kaustabh Chakraborty.
“For us, what has fundamentally worked in the last couple of years since the investment scenario has been fairly tight, we have managed to become significantly healthier as the business. We put in growth engines, they have started to kick in now,” Chakraborty told DH.
The growth engines that he highlighted are, “Establishing builder network and interior design network”. The company is also expecting that these growth engines play a more significant role in the next one year.
The physical retail segment of the company, that was started in March this year, has seen an upsurge already, with almost 15% contributions to the revenues of the company. He said ticket sizes from offline business are almost 2.5 times more than the ticket sizes from the online business.
On the sluggish online business, Chakraborty said that demonetisation significantly affected sales. “If demonetisation had not been there, I don’t think that we would have been sluggish,” he said, adding that their recovery has been slower than some other companies, given their nature of business.
The company, which is already profitable on the contribution margin, is expected to hit breakeven next fiscal. “In the next 18 months, we would be EBITDA (Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) neutral,” he said, adding that after breaking even, the company would not need further funds as it will be self sustained. For now, the company is looking towards raising funds once more, in the last quarter of this fiscal.