So, Jinesh, I think, the percentage of orders that we were delivering by roughly around Q3 end were some 28%. Now we have crossed 40% plus end of March 26 and we will continue to increase it. Our goalpost was to reach close to 45 to 50% by middle of the year. I think we remain, we believe we are ahead of the curve and we should be able to deliver it before the next quarter ends and in terms of cost, there is a marginal front loading of the cost that actually happens both for RocketBees as well as for the Qwik, because it takes certain time to reach to a little maturity within a city in terms of the number of shipments that we can do under RocketBees. So, till then, you have to front-load, so, we will have some impact of 40 to 60 bps from few quarters, but in a medium term as the network matures, our cost will normalize to a regular sort of a cost structure that we had, and that cost will be, excess will be nullified. So, that's how I hope I've answered both your question in terms of for percentage of shipment, as well as on the cost front. Mr. Jinesh Modi Okay, yeah, thanks. Mr. Harsh Kabra Thank you, Jinesh. The next question is from Vishal Doshi. Vishal, please unmute yourself. Mr. Vishal Doshi Hi sir. Hello. Mr. Supam Maheshwari Yes, Vishal. Mr. Vishal Doshi Sir, my question is, how is the store business in ME doing? and you have only added 10 COCO store in FY26. What is the plan for the store opening in financial year 27?
Brainbees Solutions Limited analyst Q&A
So in fact, you know we have mentioned in our previous calls as well, that because of the macros, we wanted to maintain capital efficiency, and that's the reason we are kind of paused opening of company owned stores in FY26. Given the initiatives that we have taken to improve the offline growth, Q4 numbers are a testimony to the improvement in growth, which is the growth is best in last seven quarters. So, we will double down on our approach to open company-owned stores in FY27 and hopefully with a mix of COCO as well as FOFO stores, we should be opening roughly 100 stores in this year. Mr. Harsh Kabra Thank you, thank you, Vishal. The next question is from Tejas Shah. Tejas, please unmute yourself. Mr. Tejas Shah Hello, am I Audible? Mr. Supam Maheshwari Yes, it is. Mr. Gautam Sharma Yeah. Yeah, Tejas. Mr. Tejas Shah Yeah, hi, hi. Hi, Supam. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Just first question, the interventions that we have made on India multi-channel business, the areas or the PIN codes that we are actually now fully deployed in terms of whatever interventions we had to make, what are the key operational and financial parameters that you are seeing, which gives us a lot of confidence that, once we roll it out fully, it will actually kind of bring back what the momentum that you're missing for last one year? Mr. Supam Maheshwari Sure. So, Tejas, while I and Vivek both can answer this question, but Vivek, you can add, I'm going to maybe start. So look, Tejas, this is a fair question and both for RocketBees initiatives as well as for the Qwik initiatives, we felt that there is a clear superior customer experience that we are able to deliver which is what we had originally planned with these initiatives and when I say its a very tangible incremental outcome and with that we are also experiencing incremental growth in those catchments for Qwik as well as in those cities where we have RocketBees has reached to a certain maturity in terms of the total number of shipments in that city. So, with that, we believe, as we increase area under the curve both for RocketBees as well as for the Qwik and as it improves, this will give us with a lag effect, because it takes time to reach to a certain volume or a network to a point where we have a certain volume in the city, and as we reach there, we will have a benefit of incremental growth being accrued to our overall online business. Vivek, you want to add anything? Mr. Vivek Goel Yeah. So, Supam, as you rightly mentioned that, we are seeing a lot of positive movement on the consumer experience matrices. So, from that window, very confident that as the network matures of RocketBees as well as Qwik expands, we should see a good positive impact on our FY27 growth and so, I think that’s it. Mr. Gautam Sharma And this is the key operating metrics that we see is basically reduction in delivery TAT, actual delivery TAT, on-time delivery which is probably the best in the industry. Its more than 92%. All these factors put together as Supam mentioned, there could be a lag in terms of seeing a tangible growth in the online business. But yes, we have already started seeing good results in terms of service metrics and we strongly believe that FY27 online route should be much superior compared to the growth that we have given in FY26. Mr. Tejas Shah Sure, and Gautam, this intervention that you spoke about on KPI, it will largely reflect in better AOV frequency or recruiting more users on the platform? Mr. Gautam Sharma It will be both, it will be, improving the retentions as well as, acquiring more number of customers. Mr. Tejas Shah Perfect. Second, just if you can elaborate a bit what exactly is the source of this gross margin pressure you touched upon a bit on certain categories, but is it more of a competitive pressure which is hurting us or inflation or mix of everything playing out together? Mr. Supam Maheshwari So, we talked about there are on the India multi-channel, there were two parts to it. We saw 140 bps that we saw in Q3 that we explained, that has continued. It will take us couple of quarters for the irrational discounts or irrational intensity to go away. We had seen this pressure in 2016-2017 as well, but everything normalized and lately, few more players in the Quick-com who have joined sort of and again there has been the same intensity has been carried forward in the larger horizontal commerce players as well. So, we believe that its probably a 4-6 quarters sort of a phenomena. It'll go away. So, that's on the 140 bps that we are talking about, that we spoke in Q3, that has continued for this quarter. The remainder part of the gross margin loss in Q4 in the India multi-channel, it's very transitory as especially coming from our manufacturing and which is crude-linked inputs cost as well as rupee depreciation and as it gets passed to the customer, you will see a bumping back fully recovered in Q2. So, it's just transitory in nature. In past, it has happened, but such a steep depreciation and such a steep increase in crude prices not happened in the past. At least we haven't seen it. But, since it will get recovered from the customer, so, from Q2 onwards, as Gautam mentioned, we'll be back on track. This part of the loss will be recovered in our Q2 numbers. Mr. Gautam Sharma Just to add, what will improve the gross margins going forward, the gross margin expansion levers, which is increase in home brand mix. There is a separate slide in additional disclosures which basically talks about the GMV mix of our home brands. Fashion mix increase, again, there is a separate slide which basically clearly shows the increase in the fashion mix, continuous negotiation of third party landmarks. So, these factors will continue to play on, which will increase the gross margin going forward. The second factor Supam talked about that the manufacturing business loss in gross margin will be recovered starting Q2. So, that will again add to the improvement in gross margin. Third one is the deep discounts, especially in the diapering category, which led to a 140 bps reduction by gross margin in Q3, that will also we believe that should be probably next four to six quarter, that should also come back in the business. So, all of these three factors will help us, regain the gross margin in, probably starting from Q2, probably next four to five quarters. Mr. Tejas Shah Perfect. Just one follow-up, if I may. This, pressure on diapers from Quick Commerce in terms of margins, is it coming from largely the unlisted players, or is it… are you seeing any behavioral change once you get listed and you start chasing profitability, or the behavior is across the same in terms of losing money or being aggressive on this category? Mr. Supam Maheshwari No, it is not specific to any low cost or it is across the board. It's more of a platform phenomenon than a brand phenomena. Mr. Vivek Goel So, Tejas to answer that question, we have seen it both in listed and unlisted platforms and that has led to a further price competition from the horizontals which are unlisted as well. So, It is across from Q-Commerce and Horizontal, where there's a price competition which is resulting into this loss as of now. Which we, as Supam and Gautam mentioned, which seems to be quite irrational and typically this cycle takes a few quarters to subside and that's what we expect as well. Mr. Tejas Shah Thanks, that's all from my side. Mr. Harsh Kabra Thanks, Tejas. The next question is from Jayant Parasramka. Jayant, please unmute yourself. Mr. Supam Maheshwari Jayant, we can't hear you. Mr. Harsh Kabra Okay, so, I think there's some issue. Mr. Gautam Sharma We can come back to Jayant. Mr. Harsh Kabra Yeah, right, right. So, Abhinava Kashap, next question we'll take from you, can you please unmute yourself? Mr. Abhinav Kashyap Hi Supam. I have a couple of questions. So, how is AI benefiting us? So, I wanted to understand that. Mr. Supam Maheshwari Okay, is that the only question, or I thought there was.. okay. Mr. Abhinava Kashyap Yeah. So, another is.. Mr. Supam Maheshwari Okay, I think, look, AI has sort of multifaceted ways of improving, both from a revenue optimization, a gross margin optimization as well as improvement in productivity, efficiencies. So, it has I mean, I would say multiple facets of improvement that one would see in the from a usage of AI. So, I can give examples because otherwise it'll take a little longer for me to be able to explain every point across different facets. It is very fascinating to be able to come up with answers and able to get information processed, whether it is benefits that we can drive to save cost like, for example, you can save your supply chain cost in terms of making a product live much faster than what you had otherwise were taking. That leads to an improvement in working capital to improvement in how you will build URLs for your SEO, AEO or GEO kind of models to be able to be more relevant, more effective, to improve conversions. So, there are n number of opportunities that we are utilizing within the company across different facets of running a business, to not just use it only in typical sort of a call center savings or automated voice bot, chatbots, email bots but across the board in different facets to be able to optimize our costs as well as efficiencies, productivities, as well as revenue optimization and even to the extent of discounts or maybe the gross margin optimization. So, these are at various stages of evolution over a period of time, some of you have already got the benefit, some of the benefits will accrue over a period of time. So, maybe we can take this question a little more offline if you have more interest, but that's a broad gist of it. There is too much excitement and talent, the entire organization, what we all can do with with the AI. Mr. Vivek Goel So, to sum up, we are working on cost efficiencies, we are working towards revenue expansion and margin expansion, as well as people efficiency. So every single aspect, I think AI has already entered in the organization. Mr. Abhinava Kashyap Cool. What kind of… what percentage of bps or something we can expect as a benefit in the long run? Is it… if you have any number, or like? Mr. Supam Maheshwari It's too early to comment on that but I think that this is going to be a meaningful outcome as we go along, it should definitely be a meaningful outcome. We'll be able to speak more in the subsequent quarters because this initiative has just been, just started a couple of months back, so its premature for us to talk about the overall improvement that it'll do but we remain very focused on the benefits that it will accrue. It's not small. It's going to be meaningful. Therefore, we'll reserve our comment on that. But, maybe in the next quarterly update, we can probably share that number as well. Mr. Abhinava Kashyap One more question I had. So, we are trading at a pretty low valuation compared to our revenues. Is there any risk of someone trying to acquire us? And Is there any chance of we are doing buybacks or something? Mr. Supam Maheshwari Look, we haven't discussed this. I think we are focused right now on what we can execute to be able to deliver a far superior growth in FY27 with expansion in our registered EBITDA, that's what we are focused at. Rest of the stuff that you talked about, we haven't experienced that in the past, maybe, but we haven't really thought through it yet as well. Yes, we have sufficient cash on the company, but we haven't discussed any of these buybacks and stuff like that so far, in our internal discussions or even board discussions. Mr. Abhinava Kashyap Okay, thank you. Mr. Harsh Kabra Thank you, Abhinava. In the interest of time, we'll just take one last question. The next question is from Percy Panthaki. Percy, please unmute yourself. Mr. Percy Panthaki Yeah, Hi. Sir, just wanted to understand this, offline channel, I think, this quarter the growth is higher than the overall India multi-channel growth, right? So, just two questions from this. One is what really has changed or what initiatives have you taken to revive the growth in the offline channel? and secondly, if that channel has really grown faster than 11%, which is your overall growth, that means the online channel has done a single-digit growth. So, what is the reason why the online channel growth is so low? given that the overall category itself might be growing at 10% and organized share within that is increasing. Just wanted to understand the reason for this low growth. Mr. Gautam Sharma Okay, sure. So, Percy. Supam talked about the initiative that we have taken in the offline business and we are talking about this initiative since our last presentation that's basically changing the product assortment from a width to a depth strategy that has really played out very well for our offline business especially the COCO business and that has resulted in a significantly higher growth in our offline business, which is around 15% in Q4 on a YOY basis. In terms of online growth, Percy, it's not single digits. So online GMV growth is roughly 10.5% in Q4 and it's around the same range for all the four quarters between hovering around 11 to 12. However, given the initiatives that we have taken around faster deliveries, both in terms of delivery through our RocketBees network and FirstCry Qwik, which we believe should be delivering at least 10% of our online orders by end of this year, we believe we should be able to deliver a much superior growth even for the online business in FY27 compared to the FY26 online growth. So, both the channels online.. offline, Supam talked about that the growth that we have delivered in Q4 should continue even for the rest of the part of FY27 and online should also deliver a much better growth while the cost is front loaded, the cost of logistics is front loaded. The results, the actual tangible results comes with a lag and hopefully in coming quarters, we should see a much superior growth in online business also. Mr. Percy Panthaki Got it. Mr. Supam Maheshwari Percy, a mix hasn't changed for both offline, online GMV mix hasn't changed what you see in FY26 over FY25. So, there is no material change in that. So, believe with the lag effect, I think you should see a growth bumping back in online as well. So, compounding effect of that you should be able to see, that's why we are very confident FY27 India multi-channel GMV growth will be much superior than the FY26. Mr. Percy Panthaki Understood. Next question I had, again, India multi-channel business only. Given that, there are the margin pressures which you said can continue for few quarters more, on a full year to full year basis. FY27 versus FY26, do you think that the EBITDA rupees crore EBITDA can have a double-digit growth? Mr. Supam Maheshwari Yes, if you look at it, you're talking about India multi-channel only, right? Mr. Percy Panthaki Yes. Mr. Supam Maheshwari Yes, you will have it, Percy, it should. Effectively, we are saying the EBITDA, I would say the drop that we have seen because of manufacturing should be recovered fully by Q2. So we'll have three quarters of that benefit. So, I don't think, that effect will be there and yes, the diapering effect will continue, may continue for the full year, but, margin expansion from the 85% of our category should continue as well and the overall growth that we are anticipating will be superior and also you'll get a operating leverage also coming out, so we still believe that we should be able to do a much superior sort of a growth, to answer your question. Mr. Gautam Sharma Both, in terms of top line as well as bottom line. Mr. Percy Panthaki Right. And one last question, if I can squeeze in. Just wanted to sort of understand on a benchmark basis what you are doing on delivery versus how the competition is doing the delivery? So, with RocketBees, I mean, own delivery, how would that compare to the structure of players like, let's say, Amazon, Nykaa, Flipkart etc.? Do they also do their own delivery or are they completely outsourced the same way that you were, let's say, a year ago, Just wanted to understand, I mean, within the industry practice, where do you fall on the spectrum? Mr. Supam Maheshwari So, Percy, I'll just answer in two points. One, I think you have to understand the baby and kids business is fairly complex from a supply chain perspective, both from an warehousing perspective as well as from a first mile, mid mile, last mile delivery standpoint, because we are dealing with a category where you have almost 10 gram diaper pin to a 30 kilogram toy car that has to be delivered and it's fairly complex to have that size of spectrum in terms of managing your supply chain from availability and very fragile products as well on top. So, given that nothing that… what we do, how we do, can be really compared with some third-party either shipping companies or third-party commerce players, whether it is the names that you have mentioned. So, I won't really directly compare, but what we have built in RocketBees is a fairly asset-light model and they use the technology is completely in-house. So, the entire technology stack that we have built is being used by dedicated partners that we have regional, local and we manage the first mile and the mid mile, although on a totally asset-light Capex light basis and the last mile partners are actually delivering and giving us a superior way of delivering and giving the better customer experience than otherwise that we were being managed through third party in our prior context. I hope I've been able to answer the landscape, fully can't be compared, but at the same time, it was totally asset-light. We're utilizing first mile, mid-mile on our own, again asset-light, but fully dedicated partners who are only delivering our shipment, not mixed shipments of third party and not other brands than us. That's not the case. It's only dedicated FirstCry deliveries at the last mile partners make. Mr. Percy Panthaki So this last mile partner, would it be dedicated for all the other players also? I mean, or is it something unique to our business model? Mr. Supam Maheshwari Well, different players have different sort of models, Percy. I won't be able to say that. In few cities, people may have different models, in few cities, they may have a third-party model. Like, if you utilize their third-party player, they may aggregate Shipments of different companies or different brands or different platforms. So, there are different models for different companies. There is no one model that every company follows. Mr. Percy Panthaki Understood. Understood. So, are we planning at some point of time to go 100% RocketBees or we will sort of stabilize at a certain percentage and keep doing business of the certain percentage as per the old methodology? Mr. Supam Maheshwari We will continue to improve the coverage of RocketBees. It will be very difficult to go to 100%. Mr. Percy Panthaki Got it, got it. Okay, that's all from me, thank you and all the best. Mr. Gautam Sharma Thanks, Percy. Mr. Supam Maheshwari Thank you, Percy. Mr. Harsh Kabra Thanks, Percy. We still have some time in hand. So, we’ll take the next last question from Jayant Parasramka. Jayant, if you can unmute yourself? Mr. Jayant Parasramka Hi, am I audible? Mr. Supam Maheshwari Yes Mr. Gautam Sharma Yeah, Jayant. Mr. Jayant Parasramka Hi, sir. Thanks for taking my question. So, just a couple of questions, on India multi-channel. I know the basic thought process behind RocketBees and Qwik was to, let's say, increase both customer satisfaction and from an ordering perspective, get back, let's say, some of So, pains which customers had of delayed delivery. So, just from your initial takeaways over the past two quarters, if you could share on places where you've implemented both Qwik and RocketBees, are you seeing higher transaction of orders versus places where RocketBees is not there. Is that giving you confidence, heading into FY27? And the second part, second question is on international business. Has there been some part of the international business also impacted by the Middle East, which has led to this low single-digit revenue growth, and is that also leading, I mean, I know on the cost side, you have been working on, getting the margins down to at least a break-even. But, just if you could impact is, has that also impacted some movement towards break-even on the international business? Mr. Supam Maheshwari Jayant, I will let Abhinav take the second question, but the first question answer is, the same question was asked by Tejas. So, answer is that we are seeing incremental growth. In the cities as well as in the catchment that where we are serving both RocketBees and Qwik. Therefore, we'll continue. We have clarity of what we are executing, we are watchful of the metrics, service metrics that Gautam also spoke about. We'll continue to improve on that and bring more area under the curve and build that incremental growth as we go along. So, that's an answer to your first question. Second question, I'll let Abhinav speak on the Middle East. Mr. Abhinav Sharma Hi Jayant. So, your second question is related to the current evolving situation and how it impacts the business. Is that correct? Mr. Jayant Parasramka Right, right. Mr. Abhinav Sharma So, Jayant, the situation, we all know what is happening. However, it has been a little bit of a moderation in consumer sentiment. I'm not going to say anything else about that, but, yes, there has been and there is some import complexities also is happening as we speak. However, I think, fundamentally for our business and our goalpost as we've shown in the last so many quarters now, has been our sort of a path is towards sustainable growth. So, we are continuously focusing on our top-line optimization and gross margin expansion. Our home brands are the most important, one of the most important levers to improve gross margins. This situation is beyond anyone's control, so to speak, but this is also an opportunity, as the way I look at it, or the way we look at it internally is also an opportunity, when we can optimize further on our processes within our discounting strategies, our marketing costs and reaching out to the right consumer who will potentially give us a longer sort of a LTV that we desire and while we do all of this, also improve our home brand mix in the top line that we generate. So, this is a unique opportunity, but our focus is the same. Growing and not chasing a top line at the expense of obviously reduced cost or very high marketing expense. While, we hope that the situation ends sooner than later, but, I think there are a lot of learnings for us in terms of how we optimize and how we continue to on our path to sustainable growth. Mr. Jayant Parasramka Sure. Mr. Gautam Sharma So, Jayant, just to conclude, we will continue to reduce our losses. What we did in FY26, we will continue to do the same thing in FY27 also. Mr. Jayant Parasramka Sure, fair enough, sir. if I just may squeeze in one last question. Just on the relevance of the 6 to 12 years age which you've extended your category. If you could just give us, in terms of how that is doing well in the past couple of quarters, just that's more I'm just trying to understand from a retention of customer point of view. How is that shaping up, if you could just give some thoughts on that. Mr. Vivek Goel So, Jayant, I'll probably take up that question. So, we are seeing a positive traction and we continue to see a positive traction in 6 to 12 that remains the fastest growing part of our business when it comes to age group of children. As we continue and basis that, we continue to build our assortment, which is more conducive. So, overall, it is good news on that front and at the same time, there's a slide in the supplementary slides which shows a long-term cohorts being very strong for like a consumer who's been acquired 10 years back continues to transact with us. There's a good segment of that consumer. So, all of that indicates towards a good positive future on the 6 to 12 segment for us. Mr. Jayant Parasramka Sure. Thanks, thanks, and all the best, sir. Mr. Harsh Kabra Thank you, Jayant. That was the last question. I'll just hand it over back to the management for any concluding remarks. Mr. Supam Maheshwari No, thank you, everyone. Thank you for your time and really appreciate. Thank you. Mr. Gautam Sharma Thank you so much, everyone, for joining. Thank you. E&OE - This transcript is edited for factual errors. In case of discrepancy, the audio video recordings uploaded on the stock exchanges on 26th May 2026 will prevail.