Carlyle Group Exits Delhivery With About 2.7X Returns

CA Swift Investments, owned and controlled by Carlyle Group, exited logistics unicorn Delhivery with about 2.7X returns, as per rough estimates.

The private equity firm sold its remaining 1.84 Cr shares of Delhivery via block deals worth a total of INR 709.5 Cr on Thursday (June 22).

After selling 2.52% of its stake, or 1.8 Cr shares, in Delhivery via a bulk deal in November 2022, CA Swift Investments held a 2.53% stake, or 1.84 Cr shares, in the Gurugram-based startup, as per March 2023 BSE data.

CA Swift Investments had invested about INR 645 Cr in the logistics unicorn. Besides the stake sale through bulk and block deals, the Carlyle Group entity also sold 9.3 Mn shares of Delhivery through the offer for sale route during its initial public offering (IPO). 

In total, it made INR 1,670 Cr from its investments in Delhivery, as per the rough estimates.

Meanwhile, the shares offloaded by CA Swift Investments were acquired by several institutional investors, including BNP Paribas Arbitrage, Norges Bank On Account Of Government Petroleum Fund, Goldman Sachs (Singapore) Pte, Citigroup Global Markets Mauritius Private Limited, Societe Generale. 

While Norges Bank bought over 40 Lakh shares of Delhivery worth INR 156.8 Cr in a bulk deal, BNP Paribas Arbitrage bought 15.7 Lakh shares for INR 60.5 Cr. 

On the other hand, Saudi Central Bank bought Delhivery’s 22 Lakh shares and Societe Generale purchased 23.2 Lakh shares.

Shares of Delhivery jumped over 7% in the early hours of trading today but shed the gains to end the day at INR 386.65, down 0.45% on the BSE.

The stake sale comes at a time when several global investment giants are offloading their shares in Indian startups to book profit amid the rally in their share prices.

In March this year, SoftBank offloaded 2.8 Cr shares of Delhivery worth INR 954.2 Cr. Tiger Global’s Internet Fund III also sold 1.2 Cr shares of the company worth INR 414.2 Cr earlier this year.

Meanwhile, SoftBank is also planning to sell more of its stakes across listed companies in its India portfolio, including Paytm and Zomato.

As on March 31, 2023, SoftBank Vision Fund 1’s gains from Delhivery stood at $194 Mn.

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