E-tailing start-up LatestOne.com plans warehouse in New Delhi

Tech and mobile products' etailing startup LatestOne.com, owned and operated by Hyderabad-based, publicly-listed Palred Technologies Limited (formerly Four Soft Limited), is planning to set up a warehouse in New Delhi within the next three months, said its chairman Palem Srikanth Reddy.

"The idea is to bring down the delivery time from 72 hours post-order, to 48 hours in the northern cities. The leased 15,000-sft warehousing facility in New Delhi will see an investment of Rs 1.5 crore and will house inventory worth Rs 4 crore,” he told mediapersons on Thursday.

LatestOne.com, the only ecommerce business run by a publicly-listed company in India, commenced operations in August 2014. It currently has a 12,000-sft warehousing facility in Hyderabad, delivering mobile covers, tablet accessories, cables, power banks etc to over 150,000 zip code locations in the country.

The etailing portal currently holds a share capital of almost Rs 20 crore, with another Rs 10 crore under commitment from the parent company. It would look at raising funds from external sources after six months,  Reddy said, while declining to quantify.

According to Ameen Khwaja, chief executive of LatestOne.com, the ecommerce industry in India stood at Rs 30,000 crore in 2014, of which over Rs 2,000 crore was tech product accessories like mobile and tablet covers, chargers and cables.

"LatestOne.com, witnessing close to 100,000 visitors a day, is currently delivering 2,500 orders everyday. Our target is to take this to 6,000 a day by the end of this calendar,” he said.

Reddy said LatestOne.com's private label products under the PTran brand account for 90 per cent of its sales.

"We are already making profits on a direct cost basis. We will turn to profitability on indirect cost basis by the end of next year,” Reddy said, adding that Palred Technologies was expecting LatestOne.com to become a Rs 500-crore entity over the next three years.

Palred Technologies Limited's scrip is currently trading at Rs 26.50 on the NSE, up 6.64%, over the previous close of Rs 24.85 a share.