Flipkart, India’s leading e-commerce marketplace, today announced a strategic minority investment in Shadowfax, India’s only cross-category, full- stack logistics platform founded in 2015. This investment is part of a $ 60 million Series D funding that Shadowfax has received from Eight Roads Ventures, NGP Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, Mirae Asset Naver Fund and World Bank backed IFC.
The company currently enables seamless delivery of 10 million monthly shipments across diverse segments ranging from hot food to grocery to fashion, electronics and other e- commerce items. Led by a strong founding team, the company has seen a 6x growth in the last two years. The Shadowfax platform has more than 100k registered partners as on date and its unique tech-enabled crowdsourcing platform helps delivery partners maximize their earnings as they work across categories.
Flipkart has an existing partnership with Shadowfax to fulfill logistics requirements across various categories in its e-commerce business. As the company focuses on building a sustainable hyperlocal ecosystem, it is working towards bringing offline Kirana stores into the fold of e-commerce by enabling them to be a part of this offering. Flipkart’s hyperlocal approach aims at placing inventory closer to customers, leveraging the existing investments of space and working capital of Kirana stores, which in turn can accelerate delivery timelines for consumers. Through this investment, the company will be able to further unlock the opportunities in grocery and fresh produce, powered by Kirana stores and leveraging Shadowfax’s strong technology and fulfilment capabilities.
The funds will be used to enhance the tech capabilities of the platform, recruit talent and increase the number of shipments to more than 100 million a month
Speaking on the investment, Abhishek Bansal, Chief Executive Officer, Shadowfax, said, “With the new round of capital infusion, Shadowfax plans to invest extensively in building long- term capabilities which are essential to developing an efficient and superior service quality ecosystem in Indian logistics. This strategic integration with Flipkart and its global best practices will not only unlock huge opportunities for Shadowfax; it will also enable us to innovate with the largest online platform in India and build core capabilities that can be democratized for the larger logistics ecosystem. With our proprietary technology and best in class platform, we are committed to creating a million micro-entrepreneurs in the next five years.”
Kalyan Krishnamurthy, Chief Executive Officer, Flipkart, said, “At Flipkart, we are focused on redefining customer experience, and hyperlocal is a key element to enable this transformation. We have seen strong synergies with Shadowfax through our existing engagement with them, and their investments in tech-enabled innovations will help us significantly reduce delivery time and provide superior customer experiences across product categories. By leveraging Kirana stores and the deep delivery capabilities of Shadowfax and other Flipkart-led innovations, we are building a strong foundation to make inroads into a dynamic hyperlocal consumer market.”
