Times Internet acquires stake in logistics company Delhivery

Times Internet has acquired a minority stake in a Delhi-based logistics company Delhivery to boost last-mile delivery service for its e-commerce portal Indiatimes Shopping.

Talking to Techcircle.in Gautam Sinha, director, technology and ecommerce, said, "The rationale behind the move is its shifting focus on building its backend capability. For this, one needs to have a good technology. And for that, you would need an in-house logistics or a deep relation with a logistics partner."

Earlier in an interview with Techcircle.in, its CEO Rishi Khiani had indicated Times Internet's willingness of join hands with partners to help the brand in selling and delivery. To read more. Times Internet is also scouting for more logistic partners with a strong foothold in tier-2, and tier-3 cities.

"Delhivery specialises in last-mile delivery and warehousing. Now, we want partners who specialise in bringing returns and has different kind of payment facilities," Sinha said. Currently Indiatimes Shopping has Fedex, Bluedart, ASL and Aramex as its logistics partners. Sinha also said the company aims to garner 10 per cent of its projected revenue of Rs 300 crore ($54 million) this year from its mobile gateway.

In January 2012, Indiatimes joined hands with Nokia India to launch an online shop for its range of mobile phones called NokiaShop.

The company will also help more offline brands – both tech and non-tech, to launch online shops. Times Internet will launch two more online shops on August 1 and intends to partner with eight more by end of this year.

Last week, it launched a mobile app for the android platform. "We have created a very tailored mobile experience different from the web one. One can just scan the bar code and go to the shopping page automatically, and then would be able to compare prices of other vendors as well and buy the product," Sinha said.

Indiatimes Shopping will also launch the app on iOS platform this week. "Seeing the traction, in both these platforms, we will go for Blackberry," Sinha said.