Shiprocket closes $185 million funding led by Zomato, Temasek and Lightrock : Tech News

Shiprocket, a logistics aggregator, has raised $185 million (Rs 1,380 crore) in a Series E funding round co-led by , Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek and Lightrock India, a senior company executive told ET.

The company did not share the expected valuation after the funding round, but people briefed on the matter said it would be $900-950 million.

ET was the first to report on September 8 the company’s plans to raise capital from Temasek.

Moore Strategic Ventures and 9unicorns were the new investors in the funding round and InfoEdge Ventures and March Capital among the existing investors.

Of the total $185 million funding, $25 million was in secondary share sale, where some of its early investors, staff stock option holders, ex-employees and angel investors have sold stake. In a secondary share sale, new investors buy shares from existing investors and the capital doesn’t go to the company’s coffers.

For New Delhi-based Shiprocket, this is the third funding round this year, taking the total funds raised to $280 million.

In this round, Zomato invested $75 million while Temasek brought in $50 million and Lightrock $40 million. Info Edge Ventures pumped in $10 million while Moore Capital invested $5 million. The remaining has come from various individual investors.

Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal had invested in Shiprocket in the previous funding round in his personal capacity.

“Zomato’s investment is more of a strategic investment where we might tie up with them for last-mile delivery and hyper-local delivery plans that we have chalked out for next year,” Saahil Goel, cofounder of Shiprocket, told ET.

Goel set up Bigfoot Retail in 2012 and pivoted to the latest model of Shiprocket in 2017. It aggregates demand from direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands, micro-entrepreneurs and local brands and sends them to logistics players like Delhivery, Ecom Express and others.

Besides shipping services, Shiprocket also offers its technology stack to retailers to integrate their shopping websites on platforms like Shopify. Gautam Kapoor, Akshay Ghulati, and Vishesh Khurana are the other cofounders of the firm.

Its current annualised revenue run-rate is around $90-100 million, according to Goel. Shiprocket’s monthly active merchant base has gone up to around 75,000 from 60,000 in July. A sizable chunk of these merchants are D2C brands. Annually, it now has an active merchant base of 175,000, Goel said.

Shiprocket will deploy the new capital towards aggressive core product expansion, research and development, talent acquisition and product development. A portion of the funds will also be directed towards the platform’s new strategic initiatives, including starting hyperlocal delivery services offering deliveries with low turnaround times (TATs), on the back of its extensive courier partnerships and growing fulfilment network and global expansion, starting with the Middle East.

“We will also actively look for inorganic expansion opportunities via M&A to further expand the stack,” Goel said.

According to him, there is untapped opportunity in post-purchase technology enablement in the D2C ecommerce space. “We are on track to launch hyperlocal delivery options which will guarantee low TAT and best in class service level agreements (SLAs)…,” he said, adding that the launch of services in Saudi Arabia last month was part of the company’s expansion plan.

PayPal Ventures, the venture investment arm of PayPal, Bertelsmann India Investments, Razorpay are among its other investors.

“Shiprocket plugs a big hole in the ecommerce space by offering customers of direct-to-consumer brands a seamless post checkout experience, including delivery…,” said Zomato’s Goyal.

In FY20, Shiprocket reported operational revenue of Rs 161.2 crore and net profit of little over Rs 10 crore. In FY19, it had clocked operating revenue of nearly Rs 59 crore with a net loss of Rs 8.6 crore. The latest financial of Shiprocket parent for FY21 is yet to be available.