India’s largest e-commerce player Flipkart has made a strategic minority investment in logistics platform Shadowfax. This investment is part of a $60 million Series D funding that Shadowfax has received from Eight Roads Ventures, Nokia Growth Partners, Qualcomm Ventures, Mirae Asset Naver Fund and World Bank backed IFC.
Founded in 2015, Shadowfax currently handles 10 million monthly shipments across segments ranging from hot food to grocery to fashion, electronics and other e-commerce items.
Shadowfax will use the funds to enhance the tech capabilities of the platform, recruit talent, increase the number of shipments to 100 million a month and expand its geographical presence to 1,000 Indian cities.
“With the new round of capital infusion, Shadowfax plans to invest extensively in building long-term capabilities which are essential to developing an efficient and superior service quality ecosystem in Indian logistics. This strategic integration with Flipkart and its global best practices will not only unlock huge opportunities for Shadowfax; it will also enable us to innovate with the largest online platform in India and build core capabilities that can be democratized for the larger logistics ecosystem. With our proprietary technology and best in class platform, we are committed to creating a million micro-entrepreneurs in the next five years,” Abhishek Bansal, Chief Executive Officer, Shadowfax, said in a statement.
Flipkart has an existing partnership with Shadowfax to fulfil logistics requirements across various categories in its e-commerce business.
Flipkart’s investment comes at a time when the e-commerce major is doubling down on building a hyperlocal ecosystem and bring offline kirana stores on board.
Flipkart said in a statement that through this investment, it will be able to further unlock the opportunities in grocery and fresh produce, powered by Kirana stores and leveraging Shadowfax’s strong technology and fulfilment capabilities.
“We have seen strong synergies with Shadowfax through our existing engagement with them, and their investments in tech-enabled innovations will help us significantly reduce delivery time and provide superior customer experiences across product categories. By leveraging Kirana stores and the deep delivery capabilities of Shadowfax and other Flipkart-led innovations, we are building a strong foundation to make inroads into a dynamic hyperlocal consumer market,” Kalyan Krishnamurthy, Chief Executive Officer, Flipkart, said.