Flipkart, a unicorn in the e-commerce industry, based out of Bengaluru, is said to be in advanced talks to invest $40 million in Shadowfax, a logistics startup that provides instant deliveries across the country.
The e-commerce major is reportedly, aiming to cover larger audience base by enhancing its doorstep delivery ahead of Diwali with the investment.
Shadowfax was founded by Abhishek Bansal and Vaibhav Khandelwal in 2015. The platform connects delivery executives to e-commerce companies, and small and medium businesses to help fulfil last-mile logistics needs as well as overnight deliveries.
It works with ecommerce, restaurants, FMCG, epharmacies, and other online and offline retailers.
On the other hand, Flipkart, owned by Walmart, is based out of Bengaluru, founded by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal together in 2007. The company initially focused on book sales, before expanding into other product categories such as consumer electronics, fashion, and lifestyle products.
ShadowFax claims to have a delivery network in over 200 cities, with 1,000 vehicles, 2,000 merchants, over 15,000 delivery partners.
The company says it processes more than 2 Lakh transactions a day. It also provides services like hyperlocal delivery, same-day delivery for orders in the same city, and next-day delivery outside.
ShadowFax falls under the logistics startup domain that also consists of other players such as Delhivery, Rivigo, Transporter.city, Parcel, Grab, etc.