Samara Capital, others buy Spoton for Rs 550 crore

BENGALURU: Express logistics company Spoton has been acquired by a consortium of investors led by homegrown private equity fund Samara Capital and Xponentia Fund Partners for Rs 550 crore in cash.

With this, PE firm India Equity Partners has completely exited Spoton, the logistics company announced on Monday.

Spoton’s acquisition is a part of Samara’s plan to create a retail ecosystem that the Mauritius-based PE firm would require if it is successful in acquiring the More supermarket chain from Aditya Birla Group, said a person familiar with the firm’s strategy. ET reported last week that Samara was teaming up with Amazon and Goldman Sachs to try to acquire More, the country’s fourth largest supermarket operator.

Samara plans to close its third fund of $550 million by the end of this year, as ET reported in June. Samara, which has already raised two funds worth around $700 million since its launch in 2007, is expected to use 70% of the proposed fund for buyout or control transactions.

“Spoton will continue to run independently while seeking Samara’s help to build out the next phase of growth,” said Abhik Mitra, chief executive of Spoton Logistics. “We plan to add air express cargo by March/April and also plan to tap into potential opportunities in the 3PL (third-party logistics) space.”

Mitra expects the air express cargo vertical to accelerate the company’s current annualised revenue of Rs 600 crore to Rs 1,500 crore in the next five years.

Spoton has about 4,000 clients including Reliance, Bosch and ecommerce companies Flipkart and Amazon.