Indian logistics firm Delhivery has courted one more high-profile investor before its expected IPO in the next two quarters: Lee Fixel’s Addition.
The Gurgaon-headquartered firm has disclosed in a regulatory filing that Addition has invested $76.4 million in the startup. The new investment is part of a Series I round, according to the filing, provided by market intelligence firm Tofler. So far Delhivery has disclosed only Addition’s investment.
The 10-year-old startup began its life as a food delivery firm, but has since shifted to a full suite of logistics services in over 2,300 Indian cities and more than 17,500 zip codes. It is among a handful of startups attempting to digitize the demand and supply system of the logistics market through a freight exchange platform.
The new investment comes months after a subsidiary of FedEx invested $100 million in Delhivery, and the startup separately closed a $277 million financing round. The startup has said earlier this year that it was looking to file for an IPO within the next six to nine months.
A look at Delhivery’s network. (Bernstein)
Delhivery is one of the largest logistics firms in India. Its platform connects consigners, agents and truckers offering road transport solutions. The startup says the platform reduces the role of brokers, makes some of its assets such as trucking — the most popular transportation mode for Delhivery — more efficient, and ensures round the clock operations.
This digitization is crucial to address the inefficiencies in the Indian logistics industry that has long stunted the national economy. Poor planning and forecasting of demand and supply increases carrying costs, theft, damages and delays, analysts at Bernstein wrote in a report last month about India’s logistics market.
Delhivery, which says it has delivered over 1 billion orders, works with “all of India’s largest e-commerce companies and leading enterprises,” according to its website, where it also says the startup has worked with over 10,000 customers. For the last leg of the delivery, its couriers are assigned an area that never exceeds 2 square kilometers, allowing them to make several delivery runs a day to save time.
Indian logistics market’s TAM (total addressable market) is over $200 billion, Bernstein analysts wrote in a report to clients earlier this year. The startup said late last year that it was planning to invest over $40 million within two years to expand and increase its fleet size to meet the growing demand of orders as more people shop online amid the pandemic.
Lee Fixel, a renowned name in the Indian startup ecosystem, is one of the first global investment partners to see potential in India. His early investment through Tiger Global in Flipkart in the past decade accelerated the pace at which the startup ecosystem in the world’s second largest internet market has grown.
Addition, a venture firm Fixel founded last year, has already started to pay attention to India, where it has also backed Public social network and neobank Jupiter.
Fixel also continues to write personal checks to Indian startups. He is currently in talks to back the Bangalore-based coffee chain Third Wave, according to two people familiar with the matter.