E-commerce enablement company Shiprocket has come out with a ₹1,617-crore IPO at ₹92-97 a share. The issue closes on August 14. It comprises a fresh issue of ₹885.5 crore and an offer for sale (OFS) of about ₹732 crore. The company has no identifiable promoter.Of the fresh proceeds, ₹210 crore will be used to repay borrowings, which stood at ₹242 crore as of FY26 end. About ₹365.6 crore is earmarked for marketing and technology infrastructure. The balance will largely go towards acquisitions and general corporate purposes.Three late-stage investors — LR India Fund I, Moore Strategic Ventures and AFOS LLC — are exiting completely. Their weighted average acquisition costs are ₹133.94-163.14 a share. At the IPO cap price of ₹97, they will exit at losses of about 28-41 per cent. The founders are only partially selling their holdings. Bertelsmann, Tribe Capital and Eternal (Zomato) will remain among the top-10 public shareholders post the IPO.Shiprocket provides logistics and commerce services mainly to online merchants and D2C brands. Its exposure is therefore more closely linked to e-commerce than to the broader enterprise supply-chain business of conventional logistics companies.Shiprocket has a profitable core shipping business, but its faster-growing newer businesses are making large losses. As a result, consolidated profitability remains weak. At the upper end, the company will have a market capitalisation of about ₹7,058 crore and estimated enterprise value of about ₹6,329 crore. The valuation already assumes a substantial improvement in earnings. Thus, investors can skip the IPO.BusinessShiprocket’s basic proposition is simple. A small online merchant may not have enough parcel volume to negotiate attractive rates with several courier companies. Shiprocket combines the volumes of a large merchant base and connects sellers with courier partners through a common technology platform.A merchant can pull orders from its online store into Shiprocket, compare courier options, generate shipping labels and track deliveries. Shiprocket also helps manage failed deliveries, returns and cash-on-delivery remittances. Physical parcel movement is largely handled by third-party courier companies. Shiprocket had 42 active courier partners and 2.15 lakh active merchants in FY26 and processed 20 crore unique transactions.Domestic shipping and related applications form its ‘core business’, which contributed ₹1,485 crore, or 73.4 per cent of FY26 revenue.Its ‘emerging business’ includes cargo and fulfilment, cross-border shipping, checkout, advertising and marketing. Cargo involves moving bulk shipments, while fulfillment includes storing inventory and picking, packing and dispatching individual customer orders.Fastrr Checkout is another offering. It helps online sellers simplify checkout by managing addresses, payment options, COD, discounts and shipping rules. It was used by over 13,000 merchants and processed about ₹6,600 crore of GMV in FY26.What worksShiprocket has built meaningful scale. Consolidated revenue increased from ₹1,316 crore in FY24 to ₹2,024 crore in FY26, a two-year CAGR of about 24 per cent.More importantly, its ‘core business’ is profitable. Revenue grew 13.7 per cent to ₹1,485 crore in FY26. Adjusted EBITDA from this was ₹186.6 crore, giving it a healthy 12.6 per cent margin.Some operating indicators are also improving. Unique transactions grew about 23 per cent in FY26. Core customer-acquisition cost declined further and the repeat rate among Core end-consumers increased from 51.1 per cent to 57.8 per cent.Average revenue per ‘Power Merchant’ (average of more than 100 unique transactions per active month) also increased nearly 24 per cent to ₹17.8 lakh. The company’s newer products can help it earn more from the same merchant base rather than relying only on parcel shipping.What doesn’t work, risksThe main concern is the profitability of growth.Emerging Business revenue jumped 65.2 per cent to ₹538.7 crore in FY26. But it reported an adjusted EBITDA loss of ₹169 crore, giving it a negative margin of 31.4 per cent.The profitable Core Business generated ₹186.6 crore of adjusted EBITDA, but almost all of this was absorbed by Emerging Business losses. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA was therefore only ₹17.65 crore on ₹2,024 crore of revenue, a margin of less than 1 per cent. Shiprocket also reported a statutory net loss of ₹79.2 crore.The composition of Emerging growth also deserves attention. Cargo and fulfilment revenue increased from ₹172 crore in FY25 to ₹303 crore in FY26 and accounted for over 60 per cent of incremental Emerging revenue. Cross-border revenue increased only about 14 per cent to ₹139 crore.There are some signs of moderation even within ‘core’. Core Power Merchants declined from 9,242 in FY25 to 8,815 in FY26.Shiprocket’s revenue also needs to be viewed differently from that of a pure software company. It recognises merchant billings on a gross basis. Cost of merchant solutions was ₹1,494 crore in FY26, or about 74 per cent of revenue. Gross profit was therefore only about ₹530 crore.This makes the valuation demanding. At an enterprise value of ₹6,329 crore, Shiprocket trades at 359 times FY26 adjusted EBITDA. Even if adjusted EBITDA jumps almost six-fold to ₹100 crore in FY27, the multiple would still be about 63 times.Adjusted EBITDA itself excludes ₹112.3 crore of share-based payment expense. It is non-cash when recognised, but represents employee compensation and potential dilution for shareholders.Unicommerce eSolutions, Shiprocket’s listed peer as per the RHP, trades at around 25 times EV/EBITDA. It had more than doubled on listing in August 2024, but is now sharply below its debut price despite strong revenue and profit growth. On EV-to-gross profit, Shiprocket trades at about 11.9 times against around 5.9 times for Unicommerce.ConclusionShiprocket has scale, a profitable ‘core’ franchise and useful exposure to growing e-commerce and D2C activity. But its faster-growing businesses need to reduce losses sharply before that growth translates into meaningful consolidated earnings.At ₹92-97 a share, investors are being asked to pay for much of that improvement upfront. The stock can be revisited if ‘emerging business’ losses fall materially, ‘core’ growth and margins hold up, or the share price corrects to offer better valuation comfort.Published on August 12, 2026