Delhivery, one of India’s largest logistics startups with a focus on handling shipments of ecommerce companies, is reportedly in the process of raising $450 million from Japan’s SoftBank Group. According to an Economic Times report, the investment is expected to come in 2 lots; a $350 million primary investment and another $100 million in the form of secondary shares liquidation.
Delhivery had been planning an IPO for the past over a year that would have raised around $350 million. That proposal now will stand dropped.
Two significant developments arising out of this round of investment in Delhivery is that the logistics startup will have is valuation enhanced to over $1 billion, making it a Unicorn, something rare in the logistics space. The other is that post this investment, SoftBank will become a major stake holder in Delhivery, owning 32% of the stake. The other investors in Delhivery include the Carlyle Group, Tiger Global, Fosun International of China, Nexus Venture Partners and India’s Times Internet group.
From the company’s performance perspective, its topline is definitely improving while the bottom line, in terms of losses, is also showing signs of better days ahead. But if there is a cause for concern, it is that the 2 largest Indian ecommerce companies, Amazon and Flipkart are both keen on accommodating their own captive logistics firms, ATS and Ekart respectively, for their shipments and in bringing down the volume assigned to third-party logistics operators like Delhivery.
The proportion has been scaled down from 55% to 45% in one year. It is however true that the sheer jump in the overall business generated by these two ecommerce giants has kept the orders and deliveries growing for Delhivery by leaps and bounds. Three quarters of the company’s business still comes from Amazon and Flipkart.
But Delhivery and other similar logistics partners of the ecommerce companies are looking elsewhere to keep their order registers ringing.