logistics aggregator shiprocket In talks with the Sovereign Wealth Fund of Singapore Temasek to lead a new era of funding People familiar with the matter said its size is expected to be $200 million.

He added that cross-border investors other than existing investors may participate in the funding round, which is expected to value the Delhi-based company at over $800 million.

The new round is currently being finalised.

“Temasek is finalizing the round,” a source said. “The company plans to use the new capital for growth and is also acquitting smaller startups in automation and other areas.”

However, the company’s founder Sahil Goel said the funding information was “not accurate”.

“We have not finalized our round of construction and have not signed any terms yet,” he said in an emailed statement to ET. “The final set of investors, fundraising amount and valuation are all working out right now. The purpose of the fundraising is to help us grow inorganically as well as grow our fulfillment business through technology acquisitions.

Emails sent to Temasek did not elicit any response till press time on Tuesday.

Shiprocket essentially collects delivery demand from Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) brands, micro entrepreneurs and local brands and forwards them to logistics players like Delhivery and Ecom Express. In addition to shipping services, it also provides its own technology stack for retailers to integrate their shopping websites on platforms like Shopify.

To date, Shiprocket has raised approximately $94 million.

In July, it was
Raised a little over $41 million in what’s called Series D1 funding PayPal’s venture investment arm is co-led by PayPal Ventures and its current investor Bertelsmann India Investments. Goyal had then told ET that he would add more investors in this round.

The growing interest in ShipRocket comes at a time when the firm is seeing increasing demand from small businesses and D2C brand Which are increasingly going online as the pandemic has accelerated online shopping across the country.

In July, it had around 60,000 active merchants on its platform and about 10,000 of them were D2C brands. Shiprocket is increasingly offering one day and two day delivery to these brands to help them reach the consumers faster.

Development and Strategic Initiatives

Goyal founded Bigfoot Retail in 2012 and switched to Shiprocket’s latest model in 2017. Gautam Kapoor and Vishesh Khurana are the other co-founders of the firm.

On the back of its funding in July, where payments firm RazorPay also invested, Shiprocket is now working on a strategic initiative with the Bengaluru-based payments firm, people familiar with the matter said.

One of them said, “They are working on an arrangement where Shiprocket will offer its services to RazorPay’s merchants, while formerly existing customers can tap into RazorPay’s products including lending.”

This could boost Shiprocket’s shipment volumes, as Razorpay has a merchant base of over five million, of which 1.5 million came in the past year alone.

Goyal said he is “looking for a tighter business partnership” with Razorpay.

Shiprocket claims to have a revenue run rate of $80-90 million annually on its platform and 130,000-140,000 active merchants annually. It is focusing on the growing D2C brand space, which now sees around 2-3 million daily shipments.

The company is also strengthening its leadership team.

Last week, it
Atul Mehta appointed as Chief Operating Officer. Unilever and Amazon veteran Mehta will head ShipRocket’s logistics platform in India, the company said.