Malaysian sovereign wealth fund Khazanah Nasional Berhad has bet $40 million (around Rs 320 crore) on Pune-based logistics company Xpressbees.
Khazanah is picking up a stake in the e-commerce logistics provider through a secondary purchase from an early investor in the company, according to a media statement.
The statement didn’t give any details of the transaction and emails sent to Xpressbees and Khazanah Nasional Berhad did not elicit any response till filing of this report.
However, people familiar with the matter said Khazanah bought around 2.9% stake in Xpressbees from Elevation Capital.
Elevation Capital will continue to hold a 2.7% stake in the company, the people said.
The transaction was struck at a valuation of $1.4 billion, the people said.
Xpressbees also counts Blackstone, TPG Growth, ChrysCapital, Alibaba Group, Investcorp, Norwest Venture Partners and Gaja Capital as its investors.
In August last year, late-stage investor Avendus Future Leaders Fund acquired a stake in Xpressbees from Elevation Capital, via a secondary transaction for Rs 195 crore.
Avendus Capital was the sole financial advisor on this transaction.
Khazanah has made several other bets on Indian firms including on Zivame, Flipkart, Transunion CIBIL, and Yepme.com, as per VCCEdge, the data research platform of VCCircle. It also exited its stake in IDFC Ltd, and Fractal Analytics, among others.
Founded in 2015 by Amitava Saha and Supam Maheshwari, Xpressbees is an end-to-end logistics company that caters to sectors such as e-commerce, pharmaceuticals, fast-moving consumer goods, retail, manufacturing, electronics and consumer durables. It claims that its network covers over 20,000 pin codes and delivers over 2 million packages every day.
“There is a huge opportunity for tech led disruption in logistics. We continue on our path to become a dominant end-to-end logistics player and look to leverage any strategic opportunities,” said Saha in a statement.
In its financial review for the fiscal year 2021-22, Xpressbees, operated by BusyBees Logistics Solutions Pvt. Ltd, narrowed its consolidated net loss to Rs 27.1 crore against a loss of Rs 63.4 crore in FY21. It reported an operational profit for the first time at Rs 44.5 crore. The company reported an 88.5% jump in its consolidated revenue from operations in FY22, at Rs 1,904.4 crore against nearly Rs 1,010.2 crore in FY21.
