Online logistics aggregator Hipship raises seed funding

Bangalore-based Hipship, an online logistics aggregator that enables home pickups for express delivery, has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from an investment consortium led by Scootsy founder Rishi Khiani and Inara Capital.

The startup will use its first round of institutional funding to grow operations and beef up its technology infrastructure, Hipship Online Service Pvt Ltd said in a press release.

Hipship, which went live in July 2014, has tied up with Aramex, Blue Dart and FedEx to offer services to individual customers and small and medium enterprises. Currently a web-only service, the company will launch a mobile app by January 2016.

The company claims to offer its services in 24,000 pin codes across the country and undertakes both road and air consignment bookings. For international bookings, it takes only documents and sample-sized shipments.

Ankit Sethia, co-founder of Hipship, told Techcircle.in that the company aims to bring in more vendors under its platform. Sethia, an industrial and systems engineer by qualification, also said that the company will diversify into other logistics service verticals as part of its long-term expansion plans.

The company has 10 employees and plans to add 50 more by the middle of 2016.

While Hipship has no direct competitors, an indirect competitor could be Shipdroid by virtue of a similarity in the business model.

Shipdroid is a SaaS-based logistics aggregation platform for online merchants launched by Infibeam Inc, the company behind the consumer e-commerce venture Infibeam.com and B2B e-commerce platform BuildABazaar. It enables e-commerce merchants to integrate with a range of courier service providers in India, while maintaining uniformity of entire logistics and fulfilment process across all courier partners.