Downloads:
Brainbees Solutions Limited, the parent company of omnichannel baby care products retailer FirstCry, held its March quarter (Q4 FY26) earnings call on May 26. Here are the key developments management disclosed during the call and in the investor presentation:
1. RocketBees now handles 40% of online order volumes: FirstCry’s in-house logistics initiative, RocketBees, expanded its presence to 62 cities in Q4 FY26 from 22 cities in the preceding December quarter. This signals the company is increasingly looking to reduce its reliance on third-party logistics partners.
According to management, RocketBees, which offers intra-day, handled over 40% of the company’s online shipment volume in Q4 FY26, up from 28% a year earlier. The company expects to deliver 45-50% of shipments via RocketBees by the end of Q1 FY27.
Chief Executive Officer Supam Maheshwari said, “We expect RocketBees to account for 10% of our revenues by the end of this year as we expand to more cities. Ours is an asset-light model which is using a tech stack that we have built in-house.”
2. Qwik completes the pilot stage, expands to five cities: Qwik, the company’s quick delivery service under which it delivers baby care products to users within three hours, is now operational in five cities, including Bengaluru, Pune and Hyderabad.
In select pincodes in these cities, FirstCry is delivering over 20% of overall online orders via its Qwik initiative and expects Qwik deliveries to account for all B2C shipments in the online business.
Notably, FirstCry began piloting its Qwik delivery service in Q3 FY26 to deliver a range of items, including diapers, baby gear, nursery products, fashion and toys, to customers within minutes by leveraging its COCO stores and stockist network.
3. Intense competition from Q-comm players in diapering category: In the rapid delivery segment, FirstCry is facing heightened competition from quick commerce players as well as large horizontal e-commerce players, especially in the diapering category. According to management, its India multi-channel business saw a 140-basis-point decline in gross margin due to aggressive discounting in the diapering category. This pressure first emerged in the December quarter and continued in Q4 FY26.
“It will take us couple of quarters for the irrational discounts or irrational intensity to go away. We believe that its probably a 4-6 quarters sort of a phenomena,” Maheshwari said.
Furthermore, an additional gross margin loss in Q4 was driven by the manufacturing business due to rupee depreciation and rising crude-linked raw material prices. The company will pass on these additional costs to customers in the coming quarters.
4. GlobalBees delivers 28% core category growth; brand rationalisation nears end: FirstCry’s brand aggregator, GlobalBees, reported core category revenue of Rs 1,876.8 crore in FY26, up 28% year-on-year,…
Source link
Disclaimer
We strive to uphold the highest ethical standards in all of our reporting and coverage. We blogs.grocliq.com want to be transparent with our readers about any potential conflicts of interest that may arise in our work. It’s possible that some of the investors we feature may have connections to other businesses, including competitors or companies we write about. However, we want to assure our readers that this will not have any impact on the integrity or impartiality of our reporting. We are committed to delivering accurate, unbiased news and information to our audience, and we will continue to uphold our ethics and principles in all of our work. Thank you for your trust and support.
Website Upgradation is going on for any glitch kindly connect at [email protected]