Bertelsmann India Investments (BII) first backed Shiprocket in 2015, when a small service provider in India nonetheless couldn’t reliably get a parcel throughout the nation. Watching the Shiprocket group ring the IPO bell ten years later has been one of many key milestones in constructing category-defining corporations.
BII congratulates Saahil, Gautam, Akshay, Vishesh and each one who constructed this enterprise – and to the 4 lakh retailers who trusted the platform with their orders lengthy earlier than any of this seemed inevitable.
What the corporate has constructed is India’s solely and main e-commerce enablement stack for small retailers and D2C manufacturers – assembled one layer at a time, over a decade, in an order virtually no person else on the planet has tried. That is the achievement price celebrating right this moment, as a result of this e-commerce stack just isn’t copied from a worldwide firm. It has been constructed grounds-up, preserving in thoughts the distinctive necessities of Indian retailers.
“A variety of traders keep away from advanced companies. We have at all times run in the direction of them, as a result of complexity buys you time and punishes vacationers. Shiprocket was about as advanced because it will get, two sides of a market, 150+ companion integrations, warehousing expertise options, a complete software program stack constructed for India. That platform which solved for this complexity is strictly what we backed. It is also precisely why it is onerous to repeat.” – Pankaj Makkar, Managing Director, Bertelsmann India Investments
When Saahil and the group got here to us with Shiprocket, they had been asking us to consider in one thing that had by no means been constructed anyplace else. That required a selected form of conviction: not in a monetary mannequin, however in founders who understood an issue so deeply that they might invent the answer from scratch.
“Bertelsmann allowed us to search out our path, as a substitute of typecasting us right into a mould from day one,” Saahil displays. “They made us suppose strategically about whether or not we had community results, knowledge scale, and talent to defend ourselves towards competitors, mainly, all of the onerous questions we wanted to ask ourselves. “
That strategic questioning – alongside unwavering conviction – grew to become the muse of the Bertelsmann India Investments & Shiprocket partnership, as showcased within the ‘Trek to IPO’ Movie. As a result of the attention-grabbing half is not the choice to speculate. It is every thing that acquired constructed afterwards.
Rohit Sood, Associate at Bertelsmann India Investments, as soon as informed the founders ‘to suppose onerous about who they carry on as an investor, as a result of the correct one could be a actual superpower’. It cuts each methods. The investor has to earn the outline, and also you solely discover out over time.
Pankaj Makkar recollects how they’ve fought all of the loopy stuff collectively and seen some wonderful highs. Lengthy lunches after board conferences, as soon as the agenda ran out. Treks from Joshua Tree to Munich. Filming ‘Trek to IPO’, the place product discuss gave method to households and management and life, West Coast journeys, annual Diwali and Christmas events. Someplace in there, skilled respect grew to become real friendship, and an funding grew to become a partnership within the full sense of the phrase. Watch the movie right here:
That journey – the mountaintops and the valleys, the strategic breakthroughs and the late-night downside fixing, the celebrations and the setbacks – is what the movie Trek to IPO paperwork. It isn’t a traditional IPO announcement movie. It is a portrait of what occurs when an investor and founders commit to one another for the long run, with real perception in what they’re constructing and why it issues.
Not a End Line, However the Newest Chapter
For Bertelsmann India Investments, Shiprocket’s IPO is much less a end line, however the newest chapter in a decade spent constructing the infrastructure Indian ecommerce now runs on. The conviction was by no means solely in logistics – it was within the retailers and small companies that might construct, promote, and scale as a result of that infrastructure existed.
That is why we’re sustaining a major anchor stake following the IPO. We stay satisfied in Shiprocket’s subsequent chapter of progress, and we need to take part within the worth creation forward. We’re not operating in the direction of the exit door. We’re strolling deeper into the partnership.
As India enters its subsequent section of e-commerce progress, Trek to IPO turns the highlight on the invisible techniques that helped companies scale throughout India – one integration, one knowledge level, one service provider at a time. Shiprocket is not a courier. It is the enablement layer that provides a small service provider the capabilities of a giant one – the charges, the attain, the routing intelligence, the client expertise, the success velocity.
Trek to IPO: Documenting a Decade-Lengthy Partnership
Conceptualized and directed by award-winning filmmaker Kushaal Chawla and his manufacturing home Dream Slate Footage, Trek to IPO traces the decade-long partnership between BII and Shiprocket’s founders – a relationship cast not simply in boardrooms, however on mountain trails throughout three continents. The movie is now stay on Bertelsmann India Investments’ YouTube and LinkedIn channels.
About Bertelsmann India Investments
Based in 2012, Bertelsmann India Investments (BII) is a sector-agnostic enterprise capital fund backing India’s subsequent era of transformative enterprise leaders. BII focuses on early progress stage startups (Sequence A to C), combining long-term capital with strategic partnership to assist founders scale sustainably. With $500 million dedicated over the following 5 years, BII invests instantly from Bertelsmann’s stability sheet—deploying $5–15 million initially and as much as $40 million throughout an organization’s lifecycle. Its portfolio consists of main innovators like Shiprocket, Eruditus, Licious, Nat Behavior, and LetsTransport. Because the India funding arm of Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA, BII leverages the energy of Bertelsmann Investments (BI), one of many world’s largest VC ecosystems with $2 billion invested throughout 250+ corporations globally.
About Kushaal Chawla:
An award-winning filmmaker, director, and producer, Kushaal is a Masters graduate of the New York Movie Academy (LA). He has written, directed, and produced the Hollywood function movie “One other Time” (premiered at Warner Bros. Studios in Los Angeles, gained 15 worldwide awards, now streaming on Amazon Prime Video US, UK, and Germany). As a director and producer underneath his banner Dream Slate Footage, Kushaal has led award-winning campaigns for high international manufacturers, together with his current AI-powered Kellogg’s marketing campaign that entered the CANNES LIONS 2026.
About Dream Slate Footage:
An award-winning international inventive company and manufacturing home, Dream Slate Footage combines conventional tentpole international manufacturing experience with next-generation AI-powered filmmaking capabilities. The corporate operates throughout function movies, TV reveals, promoting, branded content material, and authentic mental properties. Its consumer portfolio consists of Kellogg’s, LG Electronics, UNESCO, HP, Spotify, Zee World, and ABP Information, amongst others. In 2026, Dream Slate Footage was awarded Finest International Digital Advertising Marketing campaign by Financial Occasions for his or her AI-powered work that entered CANNES LIONS 2026.
