Exclusive: Shiprocket eyes $200 million from Temasek and others

Other cross-border investors besides existing investors might be part of the funding round that's expected to be worth over $800 million, they said.

The new sphere remains to be finalized.

All the sources agree that "Temasek is finalizing the sphere." "The company plans to use the new capital for growth and additionally acquire smaller startups within the areas like automation et al."

Company founder Saahil Goel, however, said the funding info was "not accurate".

"We haven’t finalized our spherical construct and haven’t signed any terms nonetheless," he same in Associate in Nursing emailed the statement to ET. "The final set of investors, raise quantity, and valuation area unit bushed the works without delay. The fundraiser is geared toward serving to the USA grow our fulfillment business yet as grow inorganically via technical school acquisitions."

Temasek did not respond to an email addressed to them until Tuesday afternoon, when we went to press.

Sprocket essentially gathers delivery requests from D2C enterprises, micro-entrepreneurs, and local brands and sends them to logistics companies like Delhivery and Ecom Express. Aside from shipping, it also provides its technological stack to retailers, allowing them to combine their shopping websites with platforms such as Shopify.

Shiprocket has raised around $94 million to date.

PayPal Ventures, PayPal's startup investment arm, and current investor Bertelsmann India Investments co-led a $41 million series D1 capital round in July. The following day, Goel told ET that the round would be expanded.

The rising interest in Shiprocket comes at a time when the company is seeing more demand from small companies and direct-to-consumer (D2C) firms that are increasingly moving online as the epidemic has sparked a surge in online shopping across the country.

In July, it had around sixty,000 active merchants on the platform and around ten,000 of them were D2C brands. Shiprocket is more and more often providing one-day and two-day deliveries to those brands in order that they might reach shoppers quicker.

Growth and Strategic Initiatives

Goel found Bigfoot Retail in 2012 and pivoted to the most recent model of Shiprocket in 2017. Gautam Kapoor and Vishesh Khurana area unit are the opposite cofounders of the firm.

Following its funding in a Gregorian calendar month, in which payments firm Razorpay also invested, Shiprocket is now working on strategic initiatives with the Bengaluru-based payments firm, according to people familiar with the matter.

One of the aforementioned, "They are functioning on a meeting wherein Shiprocket can provide its services to Razorpay's merchants, whereas the former’s existing shoppers will faucet into Razorpay's merchandise together with disposition."

This could increase cargo volumes of Shiprocket, given Razorpay features a merchandiser base of over 5 million, of which 1.5 million came within the last year alone.

Goel said he was "exploring a good industrial partnership" with Razorpay.

Shiprocket claims it has an Associate in Nursing annual revenue run rate of $80-90 million and a hundred thirty-one thousand to a hundred forty-five thousand yearly active merchants on its platform. It's been specializing in the growing D2C whole house, which currently sees approximately 2-3 million daily shipments.

The company has additionally been strengthening its leadership team.

Last week, it appointed Atul Mehta as chief operating officer. Mehta, a Unilever and Amazon veteran, is going to be heading Shiprocket’s provision platform in the Republic of India, the corporate same.