E-commerce giant Flipkart has led a $60 million funding round in logistics firm Shadowfax Technologies Pvt Ltd to strengthen the country’s largest online retailer’s hyperlocal delivery services.
The online marketplace also plans to bring onboard offline Kirana stores with the new offering and accelerate its delivery by placing inventory closer to customers via Kirana stores.
Flipkart said the partnership would enable it to strengthen its delivery of grocery and fresh produce. “At Flipkart, we are focused on re-defining 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. By leveraging kirana stores and the deep delivery capabilities of Shadowfax and other Flipkart-led innovations, we are building a strong foundation to make inroads into a dynamic hyper-local consumer market,” said Kalyan Krishnamurthy, chief executive officer, Flipkart.
Logistics start-up Shadowfax, founded in 2015, delivers 10 million shipments every month across diverse segments ranging from food to grocery, fashion, electronics and other e-commerce items. Shadowfax aims to increase the number of shipments to more than 100 million a month with the latest round of funding as well as enhance its tech capabilities and recruit fresh talent.
“Shadowfax plans to invest extensively in building long-term capabilities, which are essential to developing an efficient and superior service quality ecosystem in Indian logistics...we are committed to creating a million micro-entrepreneurs in 5 years,” Abhishek Bansal, CEO, Shadowfax said.