E-logistics platform ShipBob raises $200m

Cloud-based logistics platform ShipBob has raised a further $200 million, achieving unicorn status with its valuation more than doubling to over $1 billion since the last financing round in September 2020.

ShipBob said it is designed for small and medium-sized ecommerce businesses, providing them with “world-class fulfillment capabilities”. After growing profitably to close out 2020, the new capital will bring its solution to more customers, expand its software platform, scale its global fulfilment network and bolster its omnichannel commerce capabilities.

The Series E financing was led by Bain Capital Ventures, who led ShipBob's Series B round in June 2017, with participation from prior investors including SoftBank, Menlo Ventures, Hyde Park Venture Partners, Hyde Park Angels and Silicon Valley Bank. In September 2020, ShipBob raised $68 million in a Series D round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2.

Fulfilment centre network

Since then, ShipBob has more than doubled its fulfillment centre network, growing from 10 to 24 facilities, including its first facilities in both the United Kingdom and Australia.

In addition, the comapny has expanded its technology to open up how and where their customers can sell. ShipBob's app store now has over 40 integrations, including new 2021 partnerships like Walmart as their TwoDay delivery partner, Shopify Plus as their only certified global fulfillment partner and Pachama, which allows ShipBob customers to offset emissions and be carbon-neutral on all shipments.

"Seven years ago, we found it was difficult as a small—but growing—ecommerce business owner for us to provide our customers with a delightful shipping experience. ShipBob was founded and built to solve that challenge," said Dhruv Saxena, CEO and co-founder of ShipBob. "We are extremely proud that more than 5,000 businesses use ShipBob for all of their ecommerce fulfillment needs today, and look forward to continuing that mission as shifts to digital continue to accelerate across our customers' industries. As we increase our international reach, omnichannel partnerships and B2B capabilities, it still feels like day one for us."

"The fastest growing ecommerce brands recognize that world-class fulfillment increases revenue and builds customer loyalty," said Ajay Agarwal, Partner at Bain Capital Ventures and a member of ShipBob's board of directors since June 2017. "These leading brands are partnering with ShipBob as the one-stop cloud logistics platform to manage and deliver their merchandise to customers around the world. ShipBob's torrid growth rate and impeccable levels of customer success motivated us to double down and lead this round."

ShipBob integrates with all leading ecommerce platforms and marketplaces like Amazon, Walmart, Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Wix, Square and Squarespace, enabling ecommerce merchants to provide fast and affordable shipping to their customers without having to handle fulfillment themselves. Returns management, inventory management, financing tools and other solutions can also be activated in ShipBob's apps marketplace to provide brands with a single solution to manage their broader business needs.

Powering these capabilities is a purpose-built fulfillment technology stack with easy-to-use merchant-facing software and a sophisticated warehouse management system (WMS). ShipBob's WMS is used within all of their fulfillment centers across the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia, which shortens the time to stand up new facilities to weeks instead of quarters. ShipBob expects to open ten more facilities across North America and Europe in 2021.

"All of the facilities in the ShipBob network look the same, operate the same way and leverage the same world-class, cloud-based technology, which makes our merchant experience very consistent even as inventory is distributed across the globe," said Divey Gulati, President and co-founder of ShipBob. "With the additional investment from Bain Capital Ventures and our Series E, we can continue to make strategic, long-term investments in our product and technology to help make ecommerce businesses more successful."