BankBazaar’s Operating Revenue Recorded 91% Increase in FY18 While Losses Shrunk to 34%

Chennai-based an online financial services marketplace, BankBazaar has announced a 91% growth in the company’s operating revenues for FY18. The operating revenue grew to Rs.103Cr up from Rs.54Cr in FY17. The company’s total revenues for FY18 also grew to Rs.118Cr from Rs.71Cr in FY 17. 

According to the company, this revenue growth was fueled largely by an increase in organic visits, which accounted for almost 70% of the total traffic. 

In FY18, the website traffic more than doubled and as many as 42% of these were returning visitors. Over 57mn people searched for credit cards while 63.5mn people searched for loans on BankBazaar. The high number of organic and returning customers helped BankBazaar control customer acquisition costs and the total marketing costs including brand marketing as a percentage of revenue fell by 30% compared to the previous year. Consequently, EBITDA losses as percentage of revenue came down by 34%, highlighting the efficiency with which BankBazaar has managed to rein in overall expenses. These numbers for FY18 are unaudited and may see minor changes when the audited report is submitted.

Speaking on the same, Adhil Shetty, Co-Founder and CEO, BankBazaar, said, “We saw both investors and customers believing in our vision and wanting to join our journey of making personal finance paperless and presenceless. We continued to attract investors in our Series D, with Experian joining our existing marquee investors like Amazon, Sequoia Capital, Walden International, Fidelity Growth Partners, and Mousse Partners. At the same time, we saw customers across India, metros and non-metros, increasingly preferring to go the online way with us. We are confident of impressive growth in the coming year as well.”  

BankBazaar believes paperless, presenceless digital finance is the future of Personal Finance in India. Since its introduction 15 months back, Paperless has grown to account for over 18% of BankBazaar’s total transactions. By the end of FY19, the company expects to scale up paperless to 50% of the total transactions. BankBazaar’s focus for FY19 is to dive deeper into the paperless value chain by bringing new partners and customers into the fold. “Our online paperless model has 3X conversions at half the costs, compared to offline models. This will not only help us scale up our revenue rapidly, but also reduce our rate of cash-burn. We are looking to close the last quarter of this year as EBITDA profitable,” adds Ramesh Srinivasan, CFO, BankBazaar. 

BankBazaar which raised $110 million through funding from investors such as Amazon.com, Experian, Fidelity Growth Partners, Mousse Partners, Sequoia Capital & Walden International, has recorded 90 million visitors in the final quarter of FY18 and expecting over 400 million visitors in FY19. The company has also grown to 1800+ employees to support this growth. The company is also preparing for an IPO in 2020-22. 

Apart from India, BankBazaar.com also has an office in Singapore and Malaysia. It commenced operations of BankBazaar.sg in 2016 and bbazar.my in 2017, and wants to be a fully integrated online acquisition channel for partner banks. 

Recently, CASHe, a digital lending company for young salaried millennials, promoted by serial entrepreneur and private equity investor V. Raman Kumar, has entered into a strategic partnership with BankBazaar.com, to offer its short-term personal loans on its online financial platform. Under the partnership, users of Bankbazaar.com will now have easy access to instant short-term credit facility from CASHe through its multiple loan options ranging from Rs 10,000 to Rs 200,000 payable over 15, 30, 90 days and 180 days.