Logistics unicorn Delhivery has secured $76.4 million (~Rs. 558 crore) in capital from Addition LLC, a firm headed by renowned startup investor Lee Fixel as part of its Series I round. Addition LLC has been allocated 146,961 Series I Compulsory Convertible Preference Shares (CCPS) at a price of Rs 37,900 each share by the Gurugram-based startup.
Fixel previously worked at the New York-based hedge fund Tiger Global for 13 years, from 2006 to 2019. He handled Tiger Global’s investment in Indian e-commerce major Flipkart, which reportedly garnered the investment firm $3.3 billion. Lee Fixel founded his own investment venture, Addition LLC, in September 2019 and has made investments in news aggregation startup Inshorts and its social network platform, Public.
The latest funding comes months after a FedEx division injected $100 million in Delhivery and the startup completed a subsequent $277 million funding round. FedEx Express also sign a long-term commercial partnership with Delhivery as part of the transaction. Although FedEx Express will concentrate on overseas export and import services to and from India, Delhivery will promote FedEx Express’s international products and services in India as well as handle pick-up and delivery operations within the country.
The logistics unicorn, earlier this year, announced that it planned to prepare for an IPO within the next six to nine months period. The aforementioned round was expected to be Delhivery’s final fundraising round prior to filing its draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) with the Indian market regulator, a compulsory procedure essential for any company to go public.
Delhivery recently completed the acquisition of Spoton Logistics, headquartered in Bengaluru, for an undisclosed amount. Spoton has a pan-India network that includes almost 300 locations and around 22,000 pin codes.
Delhivery, the delivery and e-commerce logistics startup founded by Mohit Tandon, Sahil Barua, Bhavesh Manglani, Kapil Bharati, and Suraj Saharan in 2011, offers a wide range of logistics services, including express parcel delivery, Less-than-truckload shipping (LTL), and Full Truckload (FTL) freight, reverse logistics, cross-border, B2B and B2C warehousing centers, end-to-end supply chain services, as well as technological services.
According to the Delhivery website, the startup has handled over one billion orders so far. It has more than 20 automated sorting facilities, 67 fulfillment centers, 68 hubs, with 2,300 delivery locations, shipping nearly 1.5 million parcels per day.
Delhivery directly competes with Xpressbees, another logistical firm backed by Alibaba Group, which secured $110 million in November 2020, alongside Ecom Express backed by Partners Group and Warburg Pincus.
The TAM (total addressable market) of the Indian logistics industry is more than $200 billion, according to research reports, expanding at a CAGR of 10.5 percent, with systematized logistics representing just approximately 15% of the market.
