Delhivery Becomes the first Unicorn of India in 2019, Thanks to SoftBank

After months of speculation, the logistics technology startup Delhivery finally joined the Unicorn club after raising $ 395 million from SoftBank. The latest round of financing brings the valuation of Delhivery to $ 1.6 billion.

Last week, the company and its investors made headlines after SoftBank received approval from the Indian Competition Commission to take a 22.4% stake in Delhivery. Other investors in the round are US private equity firm Carlyle Group and Chinese conglomerate Fosun International. Delhivery also has Tiger Global, Nexus Venture Partners and Times Internet as its investors.

The SoftBank-Delhivery talks had been going on since last year, with a lot of back and forth between the duo regarding what is at stake in the company. Delhivery had also been contemplating an initial public offering, which will now be suspended with the new investment.

The logistics solutions company founded by Sahil Barua, Mohit Tandon, Suraj Saharan, Kapil Bharti and Bhavesh Manglani, had managed to create a bastion in India with its association with electronic business unicorns like Flipkart and Paytm, among others.

SoftBank, based in Japan, has a strong presence in India with investments in multiple unicorns and new companies in the country. The SoftBank Vision Fund focuses on India’s startups, since the firm had previously said that it had lost the bus in many of India’s startups because it did not have an office in India.

“Investors such as Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital and DST Global detected these companies at the right time. We were a tourist investor. So opening an office allows us to manage our businesses closely. We missed them before they became unicorns, which we did not do with Oyo and Policybazaar. “We want to put $ 100 million when these companies are valued at $ 500 million,” SoftBank executive VP Rajeev Misra told ET.