E-commerce major Delhivery raises $85 million
New Delhi, May 6 (IANS) Leading e-commerce player Delhivery on Wednesday announced raising $85 million (Rs.540 crore) from venture partners to build infrastructure and design services.
“Our fourth round (D series) of raising investment was led by global hedge fund Tiger Global Management along with our earlier investors Multiples Alternate Management, Nexus Venture Partners and Times Internet Ltd,” the Gurgaon-based fulfillment firm said in a statement.
Co-founded by Sahil Barua, Mohit Tandon, Suraj Saharan, Bhavesh Manglani and Kapil Bharati in 2011, Delhivery handles three million transactions a month for 70,000 merchants, 1,500 e-commerce firms and 200 off line retailers across the country.
“We will deploy the fresh capital on infrastructure and design services for e-commerce, hyper-local commerce, C2C commerce and other verticals like reverse logistics, furniture and grocery,”ABarua said on the occasion.
To meet the growing online demand for range of products across the country, the start-up had invested substantially in e-commerce technologies, logistics, fulfillment and transportation services.
“We plan to tap into the vast rural market and scale our presence four-fold by building 2.5 million square feet of fulfillment centres across the country,” Barua pointed out.
The four-year-old firm has nearly one million square feet of warehousing space in 11 fulfillment centres and employs about 10,000 people in 200 cities across the country.
“As Delhivery has built a market-leading position by innovating in portfolio of commerce technologies, we are investing to be part of its growth story that aims to meet the growing online demand for products in the country,” Tiger partner Lee Fixel said in the statement.
Terming the company’s growth phenomenal since its inception, Satyan Gajwani of Times Internet, an early investor, said proprietary technologies it had developed to tackle complex logistics issues were better than other firms in the country.
The company, which plans to ramp up its management team, has brought on Sandeep Barasia from Bain & Co and Suraju Dutta from FedEx, as managing directors.
Dutta has two decades of leadership experience from global supply chain giant Federal Express, where he oversaw operations in 66 countries.
Barasia will lead the product and service portfolio and focus on innovation, business strategy and organisation development.
An alumnus of London Business School, Barasia was senior partner at Bain in the consumer products group and brings in 17 years of experience across industries and geographies.