Digital commercial enterprise Evaly’s liabilities with customers and merchants have risen to Tk403.80 crore, while its current assets are only Tk65.17 crore as the company is unable to repay more than six times its debt, according to the central bank inspection report.
The Bangladesh Bank (BB) has observed that Evaly has fallen into a vicious cycle of liability and loss leading to an existential threat.
From July 2020 to March 14 this year, Evaly's total revenue (revenue) was TK 28 crore 54 lakh. At this time, the sale cost of the company was TK 207 crore.
On March 14 this year, Evaly did not deliver the goods on an advance of Tk 213.94 crore from customers. On the other hand, the e-commerce company owes Tk 189.85 crore to the companies from which it buys products.
The central bank informed the Commerce Ministry that Evaly has the possibility to pay only 16.14 percent of the arrears to the customers and creditors with its current assets. The remaining 84 per cent or the equivalent of Tk 338.62 crore will remain unpaid.
Bangladesh Bank said in a statement that the company had spent Tk 3.57 per sale for an income of Tk 1 and no satisfactory explanation was given for the unusual expenditure.
This information has come up in a recent inspection report of the central bank conducted on evali.com.bd at the request of the Ministry of Commerce. The central bank sent the report to the commerce ministry on June 17.
According to the central bank, evaly's current liabilities and losses are gradually increasing while noting that the company is mired in a vicious cycle of current liabilities and losses.
The central bank said, "Constantly created liabilities pose a risk to the company's survival."
In this regard, the BB report said, the company has been incurring losses since the beginning and the amount in losses has been gradually increasing over time but Evaly is raising money from customers by attracting customers through various attractive offers at massively reduced prices or at a loss to cover previous losses and cover up losses.
On February 28 this year, the total number of subscribers of Evaly stood at 44 lakh 85 thousand 234. With the cancellation of the purchase order, cashback given by Evaly, the gift card sold, a total value of Tk 73.39 crore was stored in the virtual IDs of these customers (account, holding, gift card, cashback). But at the end of that day, Evali.com.bd had deposited Tk 2.04 crore in its 10 bank accounts.
To minimise the Tk300 crore gap, we have initiated priority store sales that have proved to be profit-making so far," said Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Mohammad Rassel while talking to Bangladesh Post.
"Our projection is that by gradually reducing the losses, we will not have any more losses by 2022, and we will completely cover up the current losses by 2024 – with profit," he added.
Asked about the fact that there is only Tk2 crore in Evaly's bank account, the MD said that our gateway payments are not reflected here. The Bangladesh Bank has only taken our bank balance from Bank accounts.