Zomato loses 2% as firm completes Shiprocket acquisition

NEW DELHI – Shares of Zomato shed 2 per cent in early trade on Monday after the food aggregator, which recently made its debut on bourses, completed an acquisition of 7.89 per cent in Bigfoot Retail Solutions, a logistics start-up with a brand called Shiprocket.

Zomato’s shares fell to a low of Rs 132.25 against the previous close of Rs 135.35 on the National Stock Exchange.

Last week, reports said that Shiprocket, a logistics aggregator, is closing $185 million (Rs 1,380 crore) in a Series E funding round co-led by Zomato, Singapore's sovereign wealth fund Temasek and Lightrock India.

The company did not share the expected valuation after the funding round, but reports quoting people briefed on the matter said it would be $900-950 million.

Moore Strategic Ventures and 9unicorns were the new investors in the funding round, and InfoEdge Ventures and March Capital were among the existing investors.

Of the total $185 million funding, $25 million was in the secondary share sale, where some of its early investors, staff stock option holders, ex-employees and angel investors have sold stake, reports said. In a secondary share sale, new investors buy shares from existing investors. The capital doesn’t go to the company’s coffers.

For New Delhi-based Shiprocket, this is the third funding round this year, taking the total funds raised to $280 million.

Besides shipping services, Shiprocket also offers its technology stack to retailers to integrate their shopping websites on platforms like Shopify. Gautam Kapoor, Akshay Ghulati, and Vishesh Khurana are the other co-founders of the firm.

Its current annualised revenue run-rate is around $90-100 million, reports said. Shiprocket’s monthly active merchant base is up to 75,000 from 60,000 in July. A sizable chunk of these merchants are D2C brands.