The well-known SoftBank Vision Fund is in talks to invest $200-250 million (Rs 1,470-1,837 crore) in Indian ecommerce-focused logistics company Delhivery. The fund that was started by SoftBank’s Japanese billionaire founder, Masayoshi Son will make Delhivery’s valuation reach around $1.2 billion.
This move will take the company to the unicorn club and it will become one of the most known delivery platform in the country.
“They have been evaluating Delhivery seriously for the past few months but a transaction is not final yet,” said a person familiar to the matter.
This investment will provide Delhivery a better capital runway, given that it comes after it was reported that the logistics firm decided to push back plans for an anticipated $350 million initial public offering, an issue it had been working on for more than 18 months.
The delivery firm was founded in 2011 by Sahil Barua, Mohit Tandon, Bhavesh Manglani, Suraj Saharan and Kapil Bharati. Delhivery has strengthened its top management team, having brought on board Sandeep Barasia as joint managing director who had spent more than a decade at global consultancy Bain & Company.
Prior to this round, Delhivery had raised an estimated $260 million, across rounds. In June, the Gurugram-based company had appointed investment banks Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Kotak to run the issue.
Delhivery’s losses narrowed to Rs 249 crore from Rs 371 crore a year earlier, while revenue rose to Rs 751 crore from Rs 523 crore in the financial year ended March 2017.
If this investment takes place, it will be the second fresh investment in India for Soft-Bank, which had closed a $238-million round in online insurance aggregator PolicyBazaar in June.