E-commerce shipping and enablement platform Shiprocket on Friday signed definitive agreements for a $185-million (Rs 1,380-crore) Series E funding round. The round is being co-led by Zomato, Temasek and Lightrock India.
New investors Moore Strategic Ventures and 9unicorns are also participating in the round, along with existing investors InfoEdge Ventures and March Capital. The transaction marks Shiprocket’s third round of funding in 2021, which would bring the total funds raised by the firm to $280 million.
Other notable investors in this round include some of the country’s leading entrepreneurs namely, Brijesh Agrawal (IndiaMART), Peyush Bansal (Lenskart), Sanil Sachar (Huddle Ventures), Varun Alagh (Mamaearth), Sameer Mehta & Aman Gupta (Boat Electronics) and Ashish Gupta (Helion Ventures).
This investment will help Shiprocket further accelerate its mission to expand e-commerce fulfilment for the fast-growing universe of D2C retailers. It also plans to deploy the freshly infused capital towards aggressive core product expansion, research & development, talent acquisition, and development of a comprehensive suite of products targetted at offline and online retailers, according to a company statement.
A portion of the funds will also be directed towards the platform’s new strategic initiatives, including hyperlocal delivery services, growing courier partnerships and fulfilment networks, and for global expansion starting with West Asia.
Launched in 2017, Shiprocket’s logistics platform powers shipping and fulfilment for SMEs, D2C retailers, and social commerce sellers in India, across multiple categories including BPC, apparel, footwear, electronics and healthcare, among others.
The logistics start-up already aggregates services from 17 courier partners, while also enabling pan-India as well as international shipping for businesses. Its shipping solutions are available across 29,000 pin codes within India and 220 countries across the world. Today, Shiprocket has more than 1 lakh sellers who generate a GMV of more than $1 billion annually on the platform. The brand delivers packets to more than 66 million consumers annually and is growing 3X year on year.
The start-up claims to be one of the fastest logistics brands to become profitable in 24 months while also doubling its ARR over the last six months. Shiprocket said in its statement that it will also actively look for inorganic expansion opportunities via M&A to further expand its logistics stack.
“We are on track to launch hyperlocal delivery options which will guarantee low turnaround times (TATs) and best in class SLAs, further cementing our position as the preferred shipping and enablement partner. With the launch of our services in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in November 2021, we have also taken the first step towards expanding our footprint in new geographies,” Saahil Goel, CEO and co-founder, Shiprocket said in a statement.
“Shiprocket plugs a big hole in the e-commerce space by offering customers of direct-to-consumer brands a seamless post checkout experience, including delivery. We are excited to partner with Saahil and the team at Shiprocket as they march towards creating game-changing hyperlocal e-commerce infrastructure in the country,” Deepinder Goyal, CEO and co-founder of Zomato, said.