Beyond Shipping: Shiprocket’s Emerging Bets Gather Pace

Gurugram-based ecommerce enablement platform Shiprocket is expanding its revenue streams through a series of emerging business bets, which have gained momentum since its stock market listing earlier this year. Initially specializing in helping online merchants ship orders through various logistics providers, Shiprocket has since broadened its service offerings to include checkout, omnichannel commerce, cross-border logistics, and marketing technology (martech) solutions.

The company's financials now reflect the impact of these strategic moves as its revenue from operations surged 34% YoY to ₹592.1 Cr in Q1 FY27, up from ₹442 Cr in the previous year. While the core shipping business grew by 22% YoY to ₹411.7 Cr, the emerging business, consisting of omnichannel, cross-border, and martech offerings, expanded 70% to ₹180.4 Cr.

Consequently, the emerging segment's contribution to overall revenue reached 30% from 24% a year earlier. Within this portfolio, martech emerged as the fastest-growing business, with revenue shooting up 193% YoY. Omnichannel revenue increased by 92%, whereas cross-border revenue declined slightly amidst global market volatility.

However, this growth in emerging offerings has led to a lower overall revenue per transaction, as these businesses currently generate less revenue than the core shipping services. Shiprocket's management believes they can capitalize on the full order journey by monetising data from various stages, such as customer acquisition, checkout, fulfilment, shipping, returns, and repeat purchases.

Leveraging their vast consumer behaviour data covering 15 Cr consumers and auto-filled checkout addresses through their platform, Shiprocket aims to monetise the same transaction across multiple touchpoints. This strategy aligns with a broader trend in digital platforms, where they seek to monetise the data generated through their core businesses.

For instance, the IPO-bound payment platform PhonePe recently launched PulsePro, an enterprise intelligence platform built using anonymised transaction data from its payments network. Shiprocket's existing merchant network consists of around 2.22 Lakh merchants, including 10,170 power merchants, with an average revenue per power merchant increasing to ₹18.7 Lakh from ₹15 Lakh.

The proportion of power merchants using Shiprocket's emerging products increased to 8.8% from 7.3% in the year. While the emerging business is still loss-making, with its adjusted EBITDA margin improving to negative 24.3% in Q1 FY27, the company is investing in product and technology to shift towards higher-margin martech offerings.

As Shiprocket continues to push for more merchants to use its extended product offerings, the company will face competition from logistics platforms and various ecommerce, advertising, and SaaS players.