Shiprocket’s Top Navigators: The People Steering The Logistics Giant

Funding, business models and the financial performance of unicorns is always in the news, but we find that very little is known about the people who are often the driving force behind these new-age tech giants. 

These are the people who are often tasked with managing hundreds or even thousands of employees, business verticals that bring in crores of revenue and shape the tech ecosystem. 

Which is ironic for startups such as logistics unicorn Shiprocket, because like the logistics tech sector itself, the contribution of the company’s key leaders has flown under the radar despite its meaningful impact. 

The Zomato-backed company has gone from a third-party logistics tech player to a one-stop logistics enabler for D2C and retail brands, and added pieces to its armory such as digital marketing, data analytics, customer service solutions and more. 

Incorporated in 2012 and launched in 2017 as a digital platform, the Gurugram-based startup was founded by Saahil Goel, Vishesh Khurana, Akshay Gulati and Gautam Kapoor. Like many unicorns of its vintage, Shiprocket has raised plenty of capital — close to $400 Mn from the likes of Bertelsmann India, Zomato, Tribe Capital, Info Edge among others — and has added various verticals to its core 3PL platform. 

It’s also now piloting an ecommerce marketplace called Zop, as Inc42 reported earlier this year. In some ways, Shiprocket has gone about creating a full-stack marketplace with a logistics-first go-to-market strategy, and then building (or acquiring) the requisite infrastructure for ecommerce before the marketplace. 

But the goal is not to build a vertical stack dedicated only to Shiprocket. As Goel told us, the idea is to build “an open ecosystem for our merchants and not vertical or horizontal integration”.  

This integration is expected to help the startup grow its revenue from the INR 1,080 Cr it reported in FY23.

While Shiprocket is more than happy to talk about press releases or news stories that are easily available for these product launches, little is known about the people who are working on them, many of whom have actually been critical in shaping this new avatar of Shiprocket over the past two years.

Shiprocket’s Young Leadership Team

Just like any other startup, in Shiprocket the buck too stops at the CEO. The entire leadership team, including three cofounders, reports directly to CEO and managing director Saahil Goel. 

Ever since the startup’s Series E investment of $185 Mn from Zomato, Temasek, among others in December 2021, Goel has almost rejigged the entire leadership team, as the company readied itself for the next growth arc. 

According to our findings, besides the founders, almost 89% of the entire leadership team joined Shiprocket in 2021, meaning the majority of the leadership team has been there for the last three years. 

For instance in 2021, Praful Poddar joined as the chief product officer, coming from OLX and with 16 years of work experience. He is said to be the brain behind the new products that Shiprocket has launched, with the latest being ‘Shiprocket Quick’ – a same-day shipping service to participate in the quick commerce rush.

Besides Poddar, the company hired Atul Mehta as the CEO of domestic shipping, as it looked to solidify the leadership around the core shipping vertical.

Vitally for Shiprocket, Tanmay Kumar came on board as the CFO in October 2021. Kumar is critical for Shiprocket as it looks to raise funds ahead of its final push towards the IPO. He is actively said to be involved in an upcoming $75 Mn – $100 Mn fund raise from Tribe Capital and Koch, which has been in the news for several months.

It was also under the new CFO that Shiprocket acquired five companies – Glaucus Supply Chain Solutions, Wigzo, Pickrr, Omuni, and Rocketbox – to expand its product offerings.

Currently, all the acquired business product offerings are integrated into the Shiprocket platform as modules. While Glaucus’s offering is merged into Shiprocket’s fulfillment solutions, Wigzo’s solution has been integrated into Shiprocket Engage 360. Pickrr and Omuni offerings have been directly integrated into Shiprocket’s core offerings, while Rocketbox has been merged into Shiprocket Cargo. 

Speaking of the acquisitions. It is curious that despite bringing on several founders experienced in leading these products, all of these founders have left the company, except Pickrr cofounder Gaurav Mangla. 

Some of them have moved on to start their own ventures. One such instance is Umair Mohammed of Wigzo, who now has launched Nitro Commerce and has already secured INR 50 Cr in funding.

The Road To IPO

While the product integration took place in FY23, its reflection on the startup’s topline will be seen in FY24 financials. Where will Shiprocket finish in FY24? 

As the startup gears up for its IPO, Goel claimed that the startup is working towards achieving profitability by FY25. 

While for the time being, Goel seems to have found the right set of leaders, problems might arise in the coming months as the startup intends to continue its acquisition spree to further expand its product offerings. 

It must be highlighted that Khurana, one of the cofounders, has now moved to an advisory role as he has joined as the managing partner of Tribe Capital. So there could be further reshuffles in this regard going forward. 

As a company that’s heading for an IPO, Shiprocket cannot present a very top-heavy org chart. We have seen that most entities heading to IPOs have had to make several changes across the board to present the right set of key managerial personnel for the IPO filings. Another example is Swiggy, where there has been so much movement in the CXO layer. 

One of the potential challenges for Shiprocket, the average tenure of the leadership team is 2.3 years, which is relatively short for a company preparing for an IPO. By the time it hits the public markets, the company would have completed more than 13 years of operations, which puts this relatively new leadership team under some pressure. 

It remains to be seen how this relatively fresh leadership team will endure over time and through the challenges that come with public scrutiny

Edited by Nikhil Subramaniam

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