Shiprocket acquires retail enablement firm Omuni for 200 Cr

Logistics technology platform Shiprocket on Tuesday announced the acquisition of Omuni, textile manufacturer Arvind Internet's omnichannel technology business, to facilitate quick and efficient deliveries of shipments from the nearest store or warehouse.

Founded in 2014, Omuni is an omnichannel retail enablement platform for brands and retailers. As per the agreement, the omnichannel technology division will be transferred to Arvind Internet Ltd (AIL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Arvind Ltd, for a total consideration of Rs 152.30 crore. The entire shareholding of the company in AIL shall be transferred to BigFoot Retail Solutions Pvt Ltd (Shiprocket) for a consideration of Rs 162.90 crore. The transaction will be carried out as a combination of stock and cash for total consideration of Rs 200 crore.

With most retailers adopting an omnichannel retail strategy to cater to consumers across digital and physical storefronts, the Shiprocket-Omuni acquisition deal is aimed at delivering a more robust and seamless post-purchase experience to customers, the company said in a statement.

Saahil Goel, Co-founder, and CEO of Shiprocket, said, “Omuni’s SaaS products will allow us to unify inventory, order, catalogue, content, pricing, and data across physical and digital storefronts for the best possible ecommerce experience for customers. Together, we aim to redefine ecommerce logistics through omnichannel retail enablement.”

Focusing on leveraging cutting-edge technology to build data-driven solutions and integrated product offerings, the deal aims to improve inventory utilisation, speed up localised fulfilment, optimise operational costs, and deliver multichannel services. 

“By combining our retail stack with the Shiprocket ecosystem, we will be able to make the extensive inventory of retail stores available to be sold seamlessly via Shiprocket’s logistics as a service solution. The coming together of these two product stacks will create a lot of value,” said Kulin Lalbhai, Executive Director of Arvind Ltd. 

ALSO READ

Saahil Goel on fulfillment services as a key growth vector for Shiprocket

Launched in 2017, Zomato-backed Shiprocket was launched by Saahil Goel, Gautam Kapoor, and Vishesh Khurana. It began life as Kartrocket in 2012 to democratise commerce digitisation for the growing number of small businesses before the team decided to launch logistics services separately in 2016. KartRocket continued to exist as Shiprocket 360, but the shipping services were separately incorporated as Shiprocket in 2017.

The startup has tied up with 17+ courier partners and enables shipping deliveries across more than 29,000 pin codes and 220 countries worldwide. It provides a technology stack to help retailers integrate their shopping websites on Shopify, Magento, Woocommerce, Zoho, and others with the platform’s multi-carrier API to manage orders, print shipping labels, and avail tracking information from multiple providers, including managing cash-on-delivery (COD) orders and payment reconciliation. 

The Delhi-based company said it works with over 2.5 lakh sellers at present, who generate a GMV of more than $2.5 billion annually. The platform delivers packets to more than 70 million consumers annually and is growing transactions 2.5-3X year on year.

Acquisition spree

In June 2022, the company inked a deal to acquire a majority stake in Pickrr, an ecommerce SaaS platform for D2C brands and SME e-tailers. The deal value was estimated at $200 million, comprising cash, stock, and earn-out.

Earlier, in January 2022, the ecommerce shipping platform had announced acquiring 75 percent stake in customer data platform Wigzo Tech, and also the acquisition of business-to-business (B2B) logistics aggregator platform Rocketbox.

Besides, on February 5, the company invested $1.5 million in software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based logistics startup Logibricks.

Continuing its acquisition spree, Shiprocket acquired a majority stake in supply chain management company, Glaucus Supply Chain Solutions Pvt Ltd in the same month.

In 2021, Shiprocket raised $185 million in a Series E funding round co-led by Zomato and Singapore's sovereign wealth fund, Temasek. It is backed by investors including Lightrock, Moore Strategic Ventures, 9Unicorns, InfoEdge Ventures, and March Capital.