Zomato earnings had a few surprises

Zomato had its first ever investor date as a public entity yesterday — and its wasn’t all that cheerful. Revenues bounced a solid, but losses widened too.

Quick look at numbers:

• Total order volumes of $605 million, 37% sequential growth
• 100 million food orders processed during the last 3 months
• Revenue of $113.4 million, largely driven by core food delivery business — a big YoY jump, but that’s because business had frozen to 0 same time last year

Losses jumped nearly 3x to $48 million — but majority of that was driven by ESOPs granted to founder, and a few other major employees.

But that’s not what markets fussed over… Management said they’ll be talking to analysts on a conference call only once a year, vs. each quarter like other public firms do and that soured the mood a bit. 👎

Bottomline — there’s a common belief among growth companies that mainstream analysts don’t have the “vision” to even out quarter-over-quarter bumpiness and see the big picture.

But even Elon Musk faced some harsh questions for a decade before Tesla felt like it was going anywhere, so why not in India? Doesn’t set the right precedent.