After months of guesses and speculations, Alibaba.com Singapore E-commerce Pvt. Ltd, a subsidiary of China’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd has finally infused $35 million (Rs 225 crore) in Pune-based logistics startup XpressBees.
Earlier this month, there were reports floating in the market saying Alibaba is looking forward to investing $100 million in Xpressbees.
With this investment, Alibaba has ensured that it has a command over three prime sectors in India – Digital payments (Paytm), E-commerce (Paytm Mall) and Logistics (XpressBees).
In total, Alibaba has invested around $1.6 billion in Indian market space. It has infused $1 billion in Paytm, $175 million in Paytm Mall, $150 million in Snapdeal, $300 million in BigBasket and $30 million in TicketNew.
XpressBees was founded in 2015 by Amitava Saha and Supam Maheshwari. It is owned by Busybees Logistics Solutions and offers solutions for last-mile delivery, reverse logistics, payment collection, drop shipping, vendor management, cross-border services, fulfilment services and effectively manages supply-demand needs of the country.
XpressBees handles over 60,000 shipments every day and the number is increasing rapidly. In February 2016, the company raised $12.5 million in a series A funding from existing investors SAIF Partners, IDG Ventures, Vertex Ventures and Valiant Capital. It currently works with Paytm as third-party logistics and eKYC partner.
With this hefty investment in Indian logistics space, Alibaba will be looking forward to achieving a superiority over domestic e-commerce giants Flipkart and Amazon. This fiscal year, Amazon and Flipkart invested around $33 billion in Indian e-commerce sector. Logistics and digital payment are among the hottest sectors, considering which a lot of startups making huge investments in them.