Pune-based logistics startup Xpressbees, on Monday, said it has raised $110 million in Series E funding round led by private equity firms Investcorp, Norwest Venture Partners and Gaja Capital.
The 5-year-old startup, which concluded its Series D round three years ago, has raised $175.8 million to date, according to research firm Tracxn. The new round valued the startup at more than $350 million.
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has been a prominent name in earlier rounds of investment in XpressBees.
Xpressbees helps more than 1,000 customers deliver their products across the country and has largely capitalised on the online shopping boom in the country. Their portfolio includes Paytm, Meesho, Lenskart, Xiaomi, NetMeds, Snapdeal etc. It has a presence in over 2,000 cities and towns, and it processes more than 2.5 million orders a day — up from about 600,000 daily orders last year.
The logistics startup plans to deploy the fresh capital to further automate its hubs and sorting centres, and expand its delivery footprint to cover the entire country.
Xpressbees plans to use the new capital to rapidly expand its delivery network from about 12,000 pin codes across the country to over 20,000 before the start of sale season in 2020,
~ Amitava Saha, Co-founder and CEO, Xpressbees
The company sees a huge opportunity to help traditional retailers and consumer brands sell their products online, as customer habits have shifted during the pandemic. “The area that we want to focus on is omnichannel because we understand that well, given that we came out of FirstCry (which has a network of 400 stores besides e-commerce sales). We want to help companies to do both business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) deliveries from the same stock or warehouse,” said Saha.
Further he added, that the company plans to offer a “premium service” with an emphasis on technology.
Xpressbees works with over 30,000 delivery staff and competes with a handful of established firms and startups, including SoftBank-backed Delhivery, which became a unicorn last year, and Ecom Express, which has a presence in about 2,400 Indian cities and towns.
