Zomato-funded logistics start-up Shiprocket is betting on the direct-to-consumer (D2C) market segment to drive its growth as India records a high influx of small businesses.

The company also plans to improve its offerings to make the post-checkout experience for businesses easier.

Atul Mehta, Chief Operating Officer of Shiprocket, told businessline, “The D2C segment—business happening outside marketplaces—is about 20 per cent of the e-commerce market in India but is growing at a faster rate with small sellers doing business on Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook. By ensuring the enablement of these emerging small businesses, the direct commerce market will grow to have a 40-45 per cent share of the e-commerce market.” 

Faster shipping

The company is also looking at improving its services by increasing the shipping speed and creating a better post-checkout experience.

“With our 50 warehouses across 16-17 cities, we are enabling merchants to replicate their inventory better, help them move better through our B2B services, and create cross-docking solutions, which will result in increasing the speed fundamentally,” said Mehta. 

Global shipping

Shiprocket is also focusing on its cross-border shipping offering, Shiprocket X, which enables shipping across over 220 countries via multiple carriers and tracks them all in a single place. Mehta said that It is also increasingly focusing on solving the problem of non-delivery of cash-on-delivery orders faced by businesses through its offerings. 

Mehta added that the offerings and solutions are seeing increased traction in small-to-medium-sized business (SMB) market segment in India. However, it will continue to focus on all three—enterprise, SMB, and new small businesses—as customer segments, he said. Shiprocket works with Gillette, Mamaearth, Mcaffeine, and Nappa Dori, among others.

Shiprocket has made five acquisitions so far: Glaucus, a supply chain management company; Wigzo, a customer data platform; Pickrr, an e-commerce SaaS platform for D2C brands; Rocketbox, a B2B aggregator platform; and Arvind Internet Limited’s omnichannel technology business, Omuni. Mehta said, “The acquisitions have helped us build our stack even better. What we are doing through all the acquisitions and a host of value-added products is trying to realise more revenue and margin from the same merchant by solving more problems than what you were solving earlier.”