[Funding alert] Flipkart picks up minority stake in Shadowfax to expand hyperlocal delivery capabilities

Indian ecommerce major Flipkart on Thursday announced a strategic minority investment in logistics platform Shadowfax.

This investment is part of a $60 million Series D funding that Shadowfax has received from Eight Roads Ventures, Nokia Growth Partners, Qualcomm Ventures, Mirae Asset Naver Fund, and World Bank-backed IFC.

Sources aware about the deal placed the investment made by Flipkart at about $50 million.

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Shadowfax will use the funds to enhance the tech capabilities of its platform, recruit talent, increase the number of shipments to 100 million a month, and expand its presence to 1,000 Indian cities.

Founded in 2015, Shadowfax currently enables delivery of 10 million monthly shipments across diverse segments, from hot food and grocery to fashion, electronics, and other ecommerce items.

Speaking on the investment, Kalyan Krishnamurthy, CEO, Flipkart, said, 

“At Flipkart, we are focussed 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.”

Kalyan added that, by leveraging kirana stores and the deep-delivery capabilities of Shadowfax and other Flipkart-led innovations, the ecommerce major is building a strong foundation to make inroads into a dynamic, hyperlocal consumer market.

Flipkart has an existing partnership with Shadowfax to fulfill logistics requirements across various categories of its ecommerce business. While it focusses on building a sustainable hyperlocal ecosystem, it is also working towards bringing offline kirana stores into the fold of ecommerce by placing inventory with them and in turn placing its platform closer to consumers.

Through this investment, Flipkart added in a statement, it would be able to unlock additional opportunities in grocery and fresh produce, powered by kirana stores, and leverage Shadowfax’s strong technology and fulfilment capabilities.

Speaking on the investment, Abhishek Bansal, CEO, Shadowfax, said, with the new round of capital infusion, the platform plans to invest extensively in building the essential long-term capabilities to develop an efficient and superior service quality ecosystem in Indian logistics. He added,

“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.”

At present, the Shadowfax platform has more than 100,000 registered partners. 

(Edited by Athirupa Geetha Manichandar)

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