Delhivery Aims To List By March 2022, Will Look to Raise $500 Mn

IPO-bounced logistics tech unicorn major Delhivery is aiming to go public in the domestic market between December 2021 and March 2022, the startup’s chief executive officer Sahil Barua told Economic Times on Monday. 

The logistics firm is planning to raise around $400-$500Mn in the public offering scheduled towards the end of the year, Barua told the publication.  

“The company is still working out details of the issue, including its size. However, given that we already have substantial cash on our balance sheet, we expect it to be a primary issue in the $400-500 million range. Since we are an Indian company and have a substantial part of our business here, we will list locally,” Barua was quoted as saying.

He also added that the firm already has a cash balance of around $550Mn, and that it has already constituted a board sub-committee for its IPO and other M&A activities in January 2021.

Sandeep Barasia, Managing Director, and Chief Business Officer, Delhivery told ET that the firm had generated annual revenues of INR 3,700 Cr in the financial year ending March 2021 (FY2021). He also added that the company is “confident” on billing an annual growth of 50-55% for the next few years. 

Founded in 2011 by Mohit Tandon, Sahil Barua, Bhavesh Manglani, Kapil Bharati and Suraj Saharan, Delhivery provides a full suite of logistics services such as express parcel transportation, LTL and FTL freight, reverse logistics, cross-border, B2B & B2C warehousing and technology services. 

Delhivery claims to have successfully fulfilled over 850 Mn transactions since inception, and works with over 10,000 direct customers. The company entered the unicorn club in 2019, after raising $413 Mn from SoftBank and other investors. It has raised about $959.6 Mn to date from investors such as Nexus Venture Partners, Multiples, CPP Investment Board and others.

The IPO bound company, however, has seen two cofounders leave the company, with their promoter status being reclassified. In March 2021, Bhavesh Manglani and Mohit Tandon, two of the company’s five cofounders, have quit the company and stepped aside from day-to-day operations. The five cofounders are said to hold under 10% stake in the logistics company.

The company is already said to be in talks with several bankers such as Kotak MahindraCapital Company, Morgan Stanley, Citi, ICICISecurities, JP Morgan and Bank of America for the IPO.

In September last year, the company’s COO Sandee Barasia had confirmed that it was planning to list in India. It has also amended its articles of association (AoA) to include the scope of a public listing as a secondary exit for existing investors.

The company has been trying to go public for the last two years, but plans for the same in 2019 coincided with the Indian general elections. “It was probably not the best time to go public because a lot of focus was going to be on elections,” Barasia had said. 

Delhivery had managed to reduce its loss margin by a gracious 84% in the financial year 2020, ending in March last year (FY2020). The company reported a net loss of INR 284.13 Cr, representing a 6.8x drop from INR 1,781.04 Cr reported in FY2019.

Delhivery had also reduced its expenses by 6% to INR 3,250.4 Cr and increased its revenue by 74% to INR 2,986.4 Cr in FY2020. It had reported a revenue of INR 1,694.9 Cr and expenses of INR 3463.31 in FY2019.

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