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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, with adjusted EBITDA post-corporate expenses of Rs 91.9 crore (4.9% of revenue). The business has made no brand acquisitions since September 2022; all growth is organic.
Other brands experiencing slower growth and incurring losses are being rationalised. “Our endeavour is to complete the rationalisation of these brands by Q1FY27,” said Anuj Jain, CEO of Globalbees.
5. Preschool business doubles footprint in two years: The preschool segment (reported under ‘Others’) grew revenue 11% in FY26 to ₹472 crore, with adjusted EBITDA margin at 27%, up from 24% in FY25. The number of preschools more than doubled from 208 at end-FY24 to 536 at end-FY26, with student enrolment nearly tripling over the same period.
6. Long-term cohorts remain sticky as children’s 6-to-12 age bracket leads growth: When questioned by market analysts regarding long-term customer acquisition costs and user retention metrics, Chief Business Officer Vivek Goel highlighted the underlying stability of the FirstCry ecosystem. While infant and baby products act as natural entry points, the company is experiencing its fastest transaction acceleration in products for children aged 6 to 12 years.
Explaining user lifetime value trends, Goel said: “We are seeing a positive traction and we continue to see a positive traction in 6 to 12 that remains the fastest growing part of our business when it comes to age group of children. Goel said FirstCry is tailoring its inventory mix to retain this age cohort, securing multi-year recurring revenues per family.
7. KSA and UAE offer favourable demographics and large market opportunity: Abhinav Sharma, Country Head, Middle East Business, told analysts that birth rates are slightly higher in Saudi Arabia than in India.
Citing a Redseer report, FirstCry said that spend per child on childcare products stood at Rs 1.6-1.7 lakh in the UAE and Rs 61,000-70,000 in Saudi Arabia compared to Rs 9,280-9350 in India. This presents a huge market opportunity for the company in the international markets.
8. Offline GMV grows mid-teens, 100 store openings planned for FY27: Offline channel GMV grew approximately 15% in Q4, driven by a strategic shift from product width to depth in company-owned stores. Management stated this growth trajectory should continue through FY27.
FirstCry paused company-owned store openings in FY26 to maintain capital efficiency. Given improved offline growth, the company plans to open roughly 100 stores in FY27, with a mix of company-owned and company-operated (COCO) and franchise-owned, franchise-operated (FOFO) stores.
“Q4 numbers are a testimony to the improvement in growth — the best in the last seven quarters. We will double down on opening company-owned stores in FY27,” Sharma said.
Key operational metrics — Q4 FY26
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