Indian Generalist Quikr on the Brink After Another Underwhelming Year

The Indian general classifieds platform Quikr is said to be on the brink of collapse as its cash balance stood at a mere Rs 8 crore (around $969k) according to accounts filed for the financial year 2022 yesterday.

The accounts, seen by local publication entrackr.com, put Quikr's revenue from operations for FY22 at Rs 49.1 crore ($595k) which represents a drop of 19% on the previous period.

While expenses were down 32% compared to FY21, the company still failed to turn a profit with losses standing at Rs 21 crore ($255k).

Founded in 2008 by Praney Chulet and Jiby Thomas the Bangalore-based company was one of India's first online tech unicorns and has traditionally been strong in the categories of blue-collar job ads, used goods and vehicles.

The company has attracted a great deal of VC investment over the years with Crunchbase putting the amount Quikr has raised from investors at $424 million.

Quikr has a history of being proactive in its M&A strategy for its key verticals and in 2016 acquired real estate vertical CommonFloor in a $200m all-stock deal. At the time, CommonFloor employed some 1,000 people and had a legitimate claim to be India's largest online real estate vertical having received investment from Google's investment division the previous year.

Quikr subsequently squandered any advantage that its real estate vertical might have had and today finds itself challenging well below more popular portals such as Magic Bricks, 99acres and Housing.com.

In 2020 one of the company's main backers, the Swedish investment firm Kinnevik, downgraded Quikr's valuation by 45% to around $577 million following poor performance and issues around fraudulently inflated revenues in some verticals.

Since then the company has pared down operations and has undergone a cauterising restricting process.