New Delhi, Nov 19 (IANS): Specialty coffee chain Third Wave Coffee saw its net losses grow more than two times (year-on-year) to Rs 110 crore last fiscal (FY24).

The spike in net loss was due to excessive cash burn, especially on employee costs and rent for the company which is backed by Zerodha Co-founder and CEO, Nithin Kamath, among other investors.

The employee benefit cost made 27 per cent to the total expenditure, rising more than 68 per cent to Rs 97.26 crore in FY24, as per its financials.

The company’s overall expenses went up 78 per cent to Rs 358 crore in FY24 from Rs 201 crore in FY23.

However, the company’s revenue from operations went up to Rs 241 crore in FY24, compared to Rs 144.4 crore in FY23.

The company has more than 100 cafes in the country, with plans to expand more in FY25.

The Bengaluru-based Third Wave Coffee raised around $65 million to date from WestBridge Capital, Creaegis and Redbrook. In September, the company raised $35 million in funding at $155 million valuation.

The startup is also backed by Gaurav Munjal, Co-founder and CEO of Unacademy.

Meanwhile, amid the surge in global demand for Indian coffee, the country clocked coffee exports worth Rs 7,771.88 crore in the first half of current fiscal (FY25), a massive 55 per cent increase from Rs 4,956 crore during the same period last fiscal.

For the April-September period, the country exported 2.2 lakh tonnes of coffee, a rise from 1.91 lakh tonnes in the same period last year which is a 15 per cent volume increase, as per latest data by the Coffee Board of India.

The coffee production in India was nearly 3.6 lakh metric tonnes in the 2023-24 crop year. During 2021-22, Indian coffee exports stood at $1.016 billion, growing by 38 per cent from the previous year 2020-21.

In the year 2021-22, India was the fifth largest exporter of coffee in the world with a share of about 6 per cent of global coffee exports.