Shiprocket is increasingly looking beyond its core shipping business for growth, with its emerging technology businesses accounting for more than a quarter of its revenue in FY26, even as the logistics platform prepares to open its ₹1,618-crore initial public offering (IPO) next week.Revenue from these emerging businesses grew 65% year-on-year in FY26, significantly faster than the company’s overall revenue growth of about 25% and the 14% growth recorded by its core shipping business.The company’s shift towards businesses such as checkout, advertising, data and omnichannel logistics is central to its strategy as it looks to build a broader technology platform for India’s small and medium businesses.“We are operationally cash-flow positive. We made about ₹50 crore in operating cash last year, and about ₹17 crore-plus in net cash ,” Shiprocket Managing Director and Chief Executive Saahil Goel said in an interview.Shiprocket, founded in 2012 by Goel, Gautam Kapoor and Vishesh Khurana, has fulfilled more than 730 million shipments since 2016 and processed around 200 million orders in FY26. It has served nearly 150 million consumers, and estimates that one in every 10 Indians has completed a transaction powered by its platform.The company’s IPO will open for subscription on August 12 and close on August 14. The price band has been set at ₹92-97 per share. The issue comprises a fresh issue of up to ₹885.5 crore and an offer-for-sale (OFS) of up to ₹731.9 crore by existing shareholders, including investors and founders.Beyond shippingShiprocket’s core business remains the cash-generating engine, but the company is betting that newer businesses can become its primary growth driver.Its emerging businesses include a checkout engine, advertising and marketing technology, data-led tools for merchants, and an omnichannel logistics network. Goel said the company’s ads and checkout business grew nearly 200% last year, while the emerging segment’s loss rate has improved sharply as the products move from development to scale.“Emerging is the growth engine, because we are really investing behind engineering and AI, all those things, which we know is the big growth engine of the future,” Goel said.The strategy is built around monetising the same merchant relationship at multiple points. A single order can generate revenue through advertising, checkout and payments, fulfilment and shipping, allowing Shiprocket to expand revenue without having to proportionately expand its physical infrastructure.Goel said the company currently generates a significant portion of its revenue from emerging businesses, and that this mix is changing rapidly as those businesses scale.The company’s advertising business uses data from its large merchant and consumer network to help small businesses improve customer acquisition and marketing returns. Shiprocket said it generated around ₹32,000 crore in gross merchandise value (GMV) on its platform last year, representing roughly 4.5% of India’s e-commerce activity by orders.The company has also expanded into omnichannel logistics, helping brands move inventory into quick-commerce networks and other retail channels. Its technology integrates with platforms such as Blinkit, Zepto and Swiggy Instamart to help smaller brands manage appointment-based deliveries.Betting on the SME digitisation opportunityShiprocket’s larger pitch to investors is that its addressable market extends well beyond ecommerce-first merchants.Goel estimates India has around six crore MSMEs, of which about two crore are digital and offline merchants that could be digitised. Shiprocket currently powers about two lakh merchants, leaving significant room for expansion, he said.“We are essentially a backbone for businesses, which connects all of the ecosystem participants. Think of us like Switzerland of ecommerce. We’re fully neutral here,” Goel said.This neutrality, according to Goel, is central to Shiprocket’s differentiation from payment companies, logistics firms and other platforms that are increasingly building merchant-focused technology stacks.The company does not own the underlying payment, advertising or logistics infrastructure. Instead, it integrates multiple providers into its platform, allowing merchants to use different gateways, logistics providers and marketing channels.The IPO comes as Shiprocket seeks to capitalise on this broader opportunity, while its traditional shipping business continues to generate cash. Goel said the company had decided to raise less capital than originally planned because its requirements had reduced, while several large existing investors chose not to participate in the OFS.“We are in this for the long run. We’ve been at it for 14 years and we want to build a company that stays and lasts sustainably,” he said.The company plans to use part of the IPO proceeds towards repayment of debt, marketing and investments in its technology-led businesses. For Shiprocket, the public-market debut, therefore, marks less a transition from start-up to listed company, and more a bet that its next phase of growth will come from becoming a broader operating layer for India’s digitally enabled small businesses.Published on August 8, 2026