Milind Sharma Rejoins Delhivery As Head Of Rapid Commerce & D2C Brands

SoftBank-backed logistics major Delhivery has announced the return of Milind Sharma as the head of its rapid commerce and D2C brand verticals.

In his new role, Sharma, who is also the cofounder of e-grocery startup PepperTap, will help in building Delhivery’s rapid commerce service and  overseeing the entire product portfolio for its D2C vertical.

He will also manage in scaling up its same day and next day offerings.

“Rejoining Delhivery feels like a homecoming for me. This is where I started my startup journey, and I’m eager to contribute to the next phase of growth by building the rapid commerce service and serving the D2C brand segment and building on Delhivery’s strong foundation alongside the team,” Sharma said. 

Milind Sharma’s Return To Delhivery: Sharma has a long-standing association with Delhivery, having joined it as a founding member in 2012. He worked there for over a year or so, handling business development and strategy roles.

As per his LinkedIn profile, he played a key role in helping the startup to acquire and manage key ecommerce clients, including Flipkart, Snapdeal and Shopclues.

With more than 14 years of experience, a logistics and ecommerce veteran, Sharma, started his career as an associate with financial services company Gerson Lehrman Group in 2011. 

After serving it for a year, he joined Delhivery to manage its business and strategy in 2012. 

Soon after gaining experience of logistics business at Delhivery, he moved on to start his own logistics venture NuvoEx in 2013 with Navneet Singh. 

In the same year, they also started an on-demand grocery delivery service PepperTap, which counts Innoven Capital, SAIF Partners, BEENEXT and JAFCO Asia among its investors.

Later in 2017, logistics major Shadowfax acquired assets of NuvoEx Logistics, the parent company of PepperTap. Following that, Sharma joined Shadowfax as vice president of its business growth, new initiatives and strategy and served till 2020. 

In 2021, he became a second time entrepreneur with a quick commerce startup Flyo, which in 2022 pivoted to Mabel, a jewellery shopping brand. 

Delhivery’s Fuelling Its Rapid Delivery Play: With the rise of quick commerce boosting India’s ecommerce sector, existing startups quickly jumped on the trend. In August last year, Delhivery announced its plans to launch a network of multi-tenant dark stores for “rapid in city delivery” for ecommerce companies.

At that time, Delhivery’s CEO Sahil Barua said the logistics unicorn will also provide ecommerce companies with delivery services that will shorten the delivery cycle to 2-4 hours.

In January, the startup launched a two hour delivery service for brands further planning to expand it across other metro cities, including Hyderabad, Chennai, NCR, Mumbai, Pune and Ahmedabad.

Founded in 2011 by Barua, Mohit Tandon, Bhavesh Manglani, Suraj Saharan and Kapil Bharati, Delhivery is a transportation, supply chain and logistics company. It competes against the likes of Xpressbees, Blue Dart, Flipkart’s Ekart Logistics and Amazon Shipping.

On the financial front, Delhivery’s consolidated net profit zoomed 114% to INR 24.98 Cr in the third quarter of the fiscal year 2024-25 (Q3 FY25) from INR 11.70 Cr in the year-ago quarter on the back of strong growth in its revenue. Sequentially, net profit surged 145% from INR 10.20 Cr. 

Last month, the company also received an order from the West Bengal Goods and Services Tax (GST) department, asking it to pay INR 5.35 Cr tax amount.

Back then, in an exchange filing, the company said that the order has been passed under subsection 73 of the West Bengal GST Act, 2017, read with section 20 of the IGST Act, 2017, for FY21. Besides the tax amount, Delhivery has been asked to pay interest and a penalty of INR 53.57 Lakh.

In the same month, Delhivery also announced key leadership changes. It appointed former Airtel executive Vani Venkatesh as its chief business officer. Besides, it onboarded boAt cofounder Sameer Mehta as a non-executive, independent director and Emcure Pharmaceuticals’ Namita Thapar as an independent director.

The shares of Delhivery closed today’s trading session 1.40% lower at INR 260 on the BSE. 

This also comes at a time when other startups are also witnessing a shuffle in their leadership teams. For instance, the blockchain and IT development company Yudiz Solutions named Bharat Thakkar as chief financial officer (CFO) after Zarna Shah stepped down from her role. 

In January, enterprise managed workspace Table Space appointed its cofounders Karan Chopra and Kunal Mehra as co-CEOs.