ShadowFax gets $9M from Eight Roads

ShadowFax Technologies Pvt Ltd, a hyperlocal delivery services startup for restaurants and retailers, has secured $9 million (Rs 60 crore) in Series A funding round from Eight Roads Ventures, the investment arm of Fidelity International Ltd.

Gurgaon-based ShadowFax will use the money to scale up its business through expansion into new cities and verticals, as per a press statement. It will diversify into verticals such as grocery, bakery, pharmaceuticals and e-commerce.

As part of the transaction, Kabir Narang, managing director of Eight Roads Ventures (till recently known as Fidelity Growth Partners India), is joining ShadowFax's board.

"ShadowFax leverages technology and uses an Uber-type model to provide a unique value proposition to local merchants and end consumers. We believe hyper-local commerce is at a tipping point and logistics players serving this market are poised for rapid growth over the next several years," said Narang.

ShadowFax was founded by IIT graduates Abhishek Bansal and Vaibhav Khandelwal in May.

ShadowFax provides restaurants with a technology-driven framework to incorporate features such as automatic rider scheduling, seamless app communication, instant feedback, geo-based tracking, and location-based rider allocation. In June, it claimed to have around 35 employees and 350 riders.

The company had secured seed funding of $300,00 from Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal of Snapdeal, Powai Lake Ventures' Zishaan Hayath and Limeroad co-founder Prashant Malik.

Eight Roads Ventures is an active growth stage investor with positions in over two-dozen companies, according to VCCEdge, the data research platform of VCCircle and Techcircle.in.

However, it's only recently that Eight Road Ventures started focusing on India's consumer tech startups. Since January, it has put money in Bankbazaar, Mineraltree, Icertis, Toppr and other tech-enabled firms.

Last week, Eight Road Ventures said that it invested $15 million in Mumbai-based used vehicles marketplace CredR, run by Incredible Technologies Pvt Ltd.

The hyperlocal logistics industry has been seeing a lot of action with a bunch of new players receiving large-scale funding.

Zomato recently invested in hyperlocal delivery startup Pickingo. In July, Bangalore-based Opinio secured nearly $1.6 million from Accel Partners. Roadrunnr, another Bangalore-based player founded by ex-Flipkart employees, received $11 million from Nexus Ventures, Blume Ventures and Sequoia Capital.

Two months ago, grocery delivery startup Grofers obtained $35 million. Other players in the logistics field include Delhivery, Townrush and GoJavas. In the delivery technology space, Bangalore-based startup Locus, which is known for delivery automation software, obtained seed funding recently.