Logistics Startup Delhivery Bags $100 Million From Carlyle Group And Tiger Global
Carlyle Group acquires ‘significant minority stake’ through the investment.
Gurugram-based Logistics startup Delhivery has raised $100 million from The Carlyle Group and existing investor Tiger Global, the company said in a statement. Carlyle Group made this investment through its Asia Partners IV Fund, and in doing so, has acquired “significant” minority stake in the company, the statement added.
This is the second largest funding round in the Indian logistics e-commerce space, after private equity firm Warburg Pincus’ Rs 850 crore ($133 million) investment in Ecom Express Pvt Ltd. in 2015.
“We see significant potential for technology-enabled logistics in the country with the growth of e-commerce as well as increasing customer focus on on-time delivery and service levels,” Neeraj Bharadwaj, Managing Director of the Carlyle Asia buyout team, said.
Delhivery had last raised $85 million in a Series D round of funding led by Tiger Global with participation from existing investors Multiples Alternate Asset Management, Nexus Venture Partners and Times Internet Ltd. The current investment takes the company’s total fund raising to $227.5 million, according to data cited by Crunchbase, which aggregates information on startups.
Founded in 2011 by Sahil Barua, Mohit Tandon, Suraj Saharan, Bhavesh Manglani and Kapil Bharati, Delhivery provides logistics services in over 600 cities in India through 12 fulfillment centres for business to consumer (B2C) and business to business (B2B) services, according to the company’s media statement.
Logistics Companies Buck The Trend
While e-commerce companies are themselves struggling to raise funds, startups in the logistics space have been attracting fat cheques over the last six months.
The sector has driven a lot of last mile delivery infrastructure, Devangshu Dutta, chief executive at management consulting firm Third Eyesight, told BloombergQuint.
“Logistics is one area which is a long term requirement, whether it is inter or intra city or storage and there are lots of gaps that needs to be filled. It is not possible for individual companies to have the best infrastructure, service and visibility, and that scale set and infrastructure is now being developed as a third party outsourced capability and it has happened world over,” he added.