Tata Industries, the unlisted subsidiary of Tata Sons, has incurred a massive loss of Rs 2,043 crore in the fiscal year ending March 2023 on the sale of its 97 stake in Tata Unistore Ltd, a retail e-commerce portal, to Tata Digital Pvt Ltd.
As per company filings, Tata Industries sold Tata Unistore Ltd, which operated under the brand of Tata CLiQ, to Tata Digital Pvt, in December last year while Trent Ltd, another group firm, sold its 3 per cent stake in the company.
Tata Digital, a Tata Sons subsidiary, operates the super-app, Tata Neu, and has consolidated all e-commerce sites of Tata group’s consumer facing businesses under one umbrella. Tata Neu has grocery e-commerce site Big Basket, electronics site, Chroma and medical products seller, Tata 1MG under one super app. Tata Digital had launched the super app in April last year with an ambitious idea to take on Amazon and Flipkart to sell the group’s diverse offerings and products under one Super app.
Tata Digital, however, failed to meet its sales targets of $8 billion for the fiscal 2023 and ended the year with $4 billion sales. The Tata group now plans to invest fresh capital of $2 billion into the company over the next two years, Bloomberg reported in April this year.
Tata group declined to comment.
As per the filings, in the fiscal 2023 Tata Industries, which invests in incubating new business ventures, reported revenues of Rs 258 crore as compared to Rs 140 crore of revenues reported in the year ending March 2022. The loss for the fiscal 2022 was Rs 717 crore (See chart).
TIL has holdings in listed entities of the Tata group with its exposure highest in Tata Motors. The company had cash and equivalents of about Rs 188 crore and debt of Rs 1,619 crore as on March 31, 2023. Bankers say as the company has strong access to capital from its parent Tata Sons, and hence it will not have any problem raising funds in the future to invest in new ventures.
Loss: Rs 2071 cr Rs 717 cr
Source: Company filings