We are all aware that a huge part of the e-commerce chain is logistics and it is worth noting that even if you nail the first part of e-commerce which is ordering then also you need to nail the logistics part because it is even more crucial as the customers who have ordered your products will not return if the orders are not reaching them on time or if the orders they have done are mishandled or missing. This is where India’s logistics companies are efficient and one of them has become a unicorn as well which happens when a company reaches the $1 Billion mark in terms of revenue.
The logistics firm we are talking about is Xpressbees and it has just announced a new round of funding from Ontario Teachers’ fund. In the report, it is said that “The Canadian pension fund has acquired a stake in the Pune-headquartered startup at about $1.4 billion valuation, the same value at which the startup raised a Series F tranche earlier. With the latest investment round, Xpressbees’ cumulative funding has reached approximately $680 million. It didn’t share a name for the round, and also didn’t disclose how much of the new raise came via secondary transactions”.
Ontario Teachers’ Fund, in a statement, said, “We are excited about the market opportunity for end-to-end logistics and supply chain solutions that can meet the needs of a diversified customer base across industries, including e-commerce in India”. “Led by a strong team, Xpressbees has established a highly scalable and efficient asset-light model with proven execution capabilities.”
To give you a little backstory about Xpressbees, the company “started its journey within FirstCry, an e-commerce for baby products, in 2012. But in 2015, it became an independent company with Amitava Saha, co-founder and chief operating officer of FirstCry, moving out of FirstCry to become chief executive of Xpressbees. Supam Maheshwari, who co-founded FirstCry and serves as its chief executive, is the other co-founder of Xpressbees”. This is similar to how Flipkart operates its eKart delivery service as well as Amazon’s Cloudtail delivery service operates but they are not independent like Xpressbees in India.
