Gurgaon-based tech-enabled logistics services provider Rivigo Services Pvt. Ltd has raised Rs 322.5 crore ($50 million) in a Series D round, which saw its valuation soar to near-Unicorn levels, one person privy to the development told VCCircle.
The person cited above said that the company’s existing institutional investors, SAIF Partners and Warburg Pincus, have participated in the funding round. SAIF, which had raised a new fund last year, led the round.
The deal valued Rivigo at close to Rs 6,000 crore ($945 million), he added. It could, however, not be immediately ascertained whether Rivigo was looking to rope in a new investor as part of a larger Series D round that would put it in the haloed Unicorn club. Last year, The Economic Times reported citing unnamed people in the know that SoftBank was in talks to invest in Rivigo.
Unicorn is an industry term for startups commanding a valuation of $1 billion or more.
In a recent VCCircle analysis, Rivigo was one of the tech firms expected to become a ‘Soonicorn’, in other words, to hit Unicorn status in 2018.
A little over a year ago, Rivigo was valued at $500 million in a Series C round that saw private equity firm Warburg Pincus come in as the sole investor to pick up a 15% stake.
Separate email queries sent to Rivigo’s founder and chief executive Deepak Garg and spokespersons of SAIF Partners and Warburg Pincus, late on Friday evening, seeking comments on the transaction, did not elicit any response till the time of publishing this report. We will update the report as and when we hear from them.
In April 2015, SAIF Partners had pumped in $9.6 million (then Rs 61.8 crore) in a Series A round, to follow it up with an infusion of $30 million (then Rs 200 crore) as part of a Series B round in December the same year. The round had also seen the participation of other investors.
Besides SAIF Partners and Warburg Pincus, Rivigo is also backed by venture debt provider Trifecta.
Founded in 2014 by Garg and Gazal Kalra, Rivigo offers pan-India delivery services to e-commerce, pharma, automobiles, cold-chain and FMCG players. Garg is an IIT Kanpur alumnus who was working with McKinsey & Company before co-founding the venture, while Kalra, a Stanford Graduate School of Business alumnus, also had a stint in McKinsey.
Rivigo’s revenues for 2016-17 shot up by 170% to Rs 401.8 crore from Rs 149 crore in the previous financial year, filings with the Registrar of Companies showed. However, its losses, too, went up substantially to Rs 137 crore from just Rs 5.5 crore.
The RoC filings also showed that the company’s total expenses had tripled to Rs 525 crore. Its other expenses also increased to Rs 388 crore, while finance costs climbed to Rs 23 crore from Rs 6.78 crore during the period under consideration.
“Though the short-term profitability of the company was impacted due to major expenditure being made for expansion, the management is taking necessary steps to accelerate the company’s performance and to make it a profitable concern,” Rivigo had said in the filings.
Rivigo is among a handful of new-generation logistics firms, along with Ecom Express and Delhivery, which has attracted a lot of private investment. The companies have found private equity backers primarily because of their capabilities of disrupting the logistics business in India either through the use of technology or via specialised offerings such as delivery services for e-commerce as a sector.
Interestingly, Warburg Pincus is also an investor in Ecom Express.
