Shiprocket Eyes Middle East Market With $41.3 Mn Funding From PayPal Ventures, Others

Logistics tech startup Shiprocket has raised $41.3 Mn in its latest funding round, which has seen investments by PayPal Ventures and the company’s existing investor Bertelsmann India Investments. Besides these lead investors, Shiprocket’s existing backers Info Edge Ventures, March Capital, Tribe Capital also participated in the funding round. Venture debt specialist Innoven Capital has also invested, in exchange for equity and not as a debt round.

Razorpay, CRED founder Kunal Shah, Zomato CEO and cofounder Deepinder Goyal rounded out the list of investors in the latest funding round, which will be utilised to expand to the Middle East market, starting with Saudi Arabia.

Founded in 2017 by Gautam Kapoor, Saahil Goel and Vishesh Khurana, Shiprocket is a tech-enabled logistics aggregator that enables global and domestic shipping for marketplace sellers and direct-to-consumer (D2C) ecommerce businesses. This current investment is part of its Series D1, and there will be more investors coming on board in the overall Series D round. Including the recent funding round, Shiprocket has raised over $95 Mn over seven separate disclosed funding rounds.

In its previous funding round in February this year, US-based venture funds Tribe Capital and March Capital invested in the D2C enabler. DST Global’s Rahul Mehta and Bertelsmann India Investments also backed Shiprocket in that round, which had been reported in December 2020. The company had also raised funds in May 2020 in its Series C round worth $13 Mn, led by Tribe Capital.

The company, which helps online sellers ship their products and manage logistics, claims to have a monthly active merchant base of 60,000 with 10,000 D2C brands. The ecommerce market in India is estimated to be valued at $84 Bn in 2021 and is projected to reach $200 Bn by 2026.

Goel told Inc42 that Shiprocket clocked $49.7 Mn in revenue in FY21. The company launched Shiprocket Fulfillment in December 2020 which claims to offer same-day and next-day deliveries for all ecommerce businesses to cut down on marketplace dependency.

“Due to a lack of defined infrastructure for order fulfilment, Indian D2C brands spend a lot of time on order processing. This results in time and resource waste that could have been utilised for innovation and scaling up. Shiprocket Fulfillment aims to empower these businesses in terms of growth and scaling opportunities,” cofounder Goel added.