PayPal Ventures leads $41 million funding round in Shiprocket

Logistics aggregator Shiprocket has raised $41.3 million in a funding round co-led by PayPal Ventures, the venture investment arm of PayPal, and existing investor Bertelsmann India Investments.

Other existing investors Info Edge Ventures, March Capital, Tribe Capital and Innoven Capital also participated in the round.

Shiprocket’s strategic partners like Razorpay and entrepreneurs such as Cred's Kunal Shah and Zomato's Deepinder Goyal have also put in capital, cofounder and CEO Saahil Goel told ET.


Prior to this round, the Delhi-based startup had raised around $53 million.

Innoven Capital, a venture debt firm, has invested in equity capital in the latest round.

According to Goel, this is the ‘D1’ series of funding, meaning it is looking to onboard more investors and the total funding would be higher eventually.

Shiprocket essentially aggregates demand from direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands, micro entrepreneurs and local brands and sends them to logistics players like Delhivery, Ecom Express and others.

“We have a monthly active merchant base of 60,000 and around 10,000 of them are D2C brands. This is a big area of focus for us as we expand deeper in the country offering 2-day deliveries,” Goel said.

Shiprocket will use the funds to expand to the Middle East, starting from Saudi Arabia.

While the ecommerce market is dominated by Flipkart and Amazon India and other vertical e-tailers, a host of niche D2C brands have emerged in India over the last 12-24 months.

Shiprocket is focusing on this sector as the segment is believed to be clocking daily shipments of 2-3 million.

This includes relatively lesser-known local brands that are also going direct to consumers.

Goel said the D2C commerce segment is around 15% of the overall ecommerce market in India and is projected to grow to 30-35% in the next five years.

“Shiprocket has excelled by focusing on building products that solve major logistical problems for businesses as they scale, much like PayPal has supported merchants with payments,” said Marc Donnadieu, director, PayPal Ventures.

Besides shipping services, Shiprocket also offers its technology stack to retailers to integrate their shopping websites on platforms like Shopify.