Logistics startup Shadowfax beefs up top deck with two hires

Bengaluru-based logistics startup Shadowfax Technologies Pvt. Ltd has beefed up its top leadership by hiring two new executives.

Shadowfax said in a statement that Praveen Kumar KJ will be its chief financial officer while Rohit Gupta will take up the role of vice president-business development and strategy.

The appointments signal its growth ambitions for the near future, Shadowfax added.

“Both Praveen and Rohit bring with them deep technical knowledge and leadership abilities in their respective roles to help us maintain a steady growth through our next stage of progression and beyond,” said Abhishek Bansal, co-founder and chief executive officer of Shadowfax.

Kumar, who has more than two decades of industry experience, had previously worked as group financial officer at listed mobile value-added services provider OnMobile Global Ltd. The qualified chartered accountant had also served as the chief financial officer for Singapore-headquartered ed-tech company XSEED Education for a year.

Gupta was a deputy director at Myntra, the Flipkart-owned fashion e-tailer, where his role included driving the business growth for private brands. He had also worked at food & beverage giant Mondelez International in the past.

At Shadowfax, the Indian Institute of Management-Lucknow graduate will lead business development for the e-commerce and hyperlocal logistics business.

Founded in May 2015 by Abhishek Bansal and Vaibhav Khandelwal (chief technology officer), Shadowfax provides intra-city logistics services to neighbourhood merchants, grocery shops, pharmacies and e-commerce companies. It initially started out as a food-only delivery player but has diversified over the years.

Shadowfax fulfils 90,000 orders a day for its customers spread across sectors that include food, groceries, fashion, pharmacy, furniture, e-commerce and traditional business sectors. Its clients include Domino’s Pizza, BigBasket, Amazon, Paytm, Flipkart and McDonald’s. In addition, Shadowfax recently announced its expansion to China.

By 2021, the company aims to connect four lakh new businesses and delivery partners to its platform, up from the current 40,000 connections. Shadowfax services will be available across 5.000 pin codes all over India from this year, it said.

In September last year, International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private-sector investment arm of the World Bank, said it planned to invest in Shadowfax.

The disclosure came a little over a month after Shadowfax had raised $22 million in Series C funding led by US-based investment firm NGP Capital with participation from Qualcomm Ventures, Mirae Asset and existing investor Eight Roads Ventures.

As part of its inorganic growth strategy, Shadowfax acquired the assets of ecommerce-focussed reverse logistics platform Nuvo Ex in October 2017

In November 2015, it had acqui-hired Gurugram-based reverse e-commerce logistics startup Pickingo Logixpress Pvt. Ltd.

The Delhi-registered startup's standalone revenue from operations more than doubled to Rs 76.3 crore for 2017-18 from Rs 31.7 crore the previous year, its filings to the Registrar of Companies show.

Net loss shrank to Rs 21.2 crore from Rs 28.5 crore while total expenditure climbed 59% to Rs 99.4 crore from Rs 62.6 crore.