News aggregator InShorts posts $18.9 Mn revenue in FY22, advertising costs surge to $21.6 Mn
- ByStartupStory | February 21, 2023
News aggregator InShorts had raised $100 million across two rounds during FY22 but it looks like back to back fundraises didn’t translate into a noticeable growth in the last fiscal year.
The decade old company managed around 45% growth in its operating scale in FY22 while its losses widened 72% during the same period.
InShorts’s revenue from operations grew 44.9% to $18.94 million or Rs 143.94 crore in FY22 from $13.07 million or Rs 99.33 crore in FY21, according to its annual financial statement filed by the group company (InShorts Pte Ltd) in Singapore.
The company summarises news stories in 60 words for handy consumption on smartphones and covers beats including politics, sports, tech, business, world, entertainment etc.
According to Sensor Tower data, InShorts has amassed over 30 million downloads since its inception. The company also launched location based social network Public in late 2019 which has witnessed more than 200 million downloads in the last 24 months.
According to the company, it already has crossed a monthly active (MAU) base of 60 million and targets to cross the 100 million MAU milestone in the next three to five years.
On the cost side, advertising formed 42.5% of the total expenditure which surged 75.3% to $21.63 million or Rs 164.39 crore in FY22 from $12.34 million or Rs 93.78 crore in FY21.
A major chunk of this cost seems to have gone to promote its new app Public.
Content expenses turned out to be the second largest burn for InShorts. This cost accounted for 20.5% of its overall expenditure and grew by 35.6% to $10.44 million or Rs 79.34 crore in the last fiscal year.
The company hired aggressively to build, refine and market Public in FY22 and its employee benefit cost spiked 42.1% to $9.69 million or Rs 73.6 crore during FY22. The company spent $3.58 million or Rs 27.21 crore which catalysed its overall cost by 58.8% to $50.9 million or Rs 386.8 crore in the last fiscal year.
Outpacing its revenue growth, InShorts’ losses jumped 71.9% to $31.8 million or Rs 241.68 crore in FY22. Its cash outflow from operations worsened 2.4X to $35.4 million or Rs 269 crore.
Moving to the ratios, the firm’s ROCE and EBITDA margin stood at -36.07% and -163.91%. On a unit level, InShorts spent $2.69 to earn a single unit of operating revenue in the last fiscal year (FY22).
InShorts’ closest competitor Dailyhunt reported Rs 965 crore in revenue in FY22. The VerSe Innovation-owned firm also registered a huge growth in expenses, as a result, it registered Rs 2,563 crore loss during the last fiscal year.
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