So, Porter just became a unicorn – the third one of 2025. It’s interesting, because in a year like 2021, it might have seemed normal to have a unicorn being created every week in India to little to no amazement. But, in 2025, a unicorn seems to be becoming much like its name suggests: rare.
Though, with the rise of e-commerce and quick commerce companies, you might have gotten pretty acclimated to seeing riders and trucks buzzing through to the streets to get to where they’re supposed to go. To be fair, everyone’s rushing through to get to wherever the roads take them. But, it seems that logistics is whetting the edge of its ecosystem.
In May 2025, it was announced that Porter had a $200 million Series F funding round led by Kedaara Capital and Wellington. That was said to have propelled Porter to have a valuation of around $1.2 billion. That’s said to be 2x its post-money valuation of $500 million during Porter’s 2021 funding round when it was said to have raised $101 million led by Tiger Global.
Not too shabby, especially, if you might be double the valuation at a time where there seemed to be a gold rush and much frothiness.
The premise of Porter seemed to be building on-demand intra-city logistics for India’s small businesses. Maybe, there was a sense by the founders that the smaller fish might be logistically stranded. So, it came out with mini-trucks and two-wheelers for deliveries for MSMEs and was said to expand to over 22 cities in India. Plus, it included an element of P2P delivery and interestingly, competitors, like Dunzo and Swiggy Genie, have bowed out of that dance.
A Partner at Kedaara Capital praised Porter for being tech-first and asset-light. Because the startup doesn’t own or lease its vehicles – the way BluSmart did – but invites those who do have vehicles to join its tech platform. That’s a sweet elimination of CapEx right there. So, it seems like Porter could just enter a new city without having to buy assets and simply onboarding gig workers and letting that city’s MSMEs know it exists. And if there’s not much demand in that city, it can flex down a bit easier.
Along with a logistics company, like Porter, becoming a unicorn in May 2025: another interesting development took place in the sector. In April 2025, Delhivery announced plans to acquire Ecom Express for around $165 million at an 80% discount of its peak valuation of $850 million. This was for close to 99.5%.
Unfortunately, it may have been a distress sale after reports outlined that Ecom was being plagued by operational challenges, misreported financials, a founder exodus and failed listing attempts. At one point, Ecom may have filed for a public listing, but that IPO was shelved, with post-pandemic volatility being cited.
But, there’s a bit of a dead or final reckoning that these 3PL (3rd-Party Logistics) companies might be facing. According to Bain, e-retail growth was said to be around 10% in 2024, compared to historical growth rates of more than 20%. That’s, like, half. Q-comm might have taken away orders from e-commerce companies for small-ticket and grocery orders.
That might shrink the volume pool for 3PLs – not so much for Porter, but for those built around D2C e-commerce and assuming they might have invested in hubs or sorting centres. Porter might be a bit more fragmented – in a good way – without having to rely on e-commerce shipments or bigger enterprise clients. Who knew that being more fragmented could mean being more resilient? Take that, q-comm, Porter’s insulated from your shocks and upending.
Unfortunately, other logistics players might struggle with their unit economics if there are consistently low AOVs. And Ecom Express was said to rely on Meesho as its major client, accounting for close to 50% of its business. But, Meesho was said to have launched its own in-house logistics platform called Valmo. That made things much harder for Ecom.
To some extent, buying Ecom might have been a great opportunity. The spokespersons have extolled its virtues well. But, maybe, Ecom was collapsing, so Delhivery saw this as a way to control the market a bit better. Interestingly, could this mean that the logistics space might go the telecom route: where there are very very few winners, no room for middle players and consolidation becomes imperative? Vodafone and Idea become Vi, because Vi’re all in this together.
And of course, with Dunzo shuttering and Swiggy shutting down – even if temporarily – its Genie operations, there might be a bit of a power vacuum, but also possibly mean that the unit economics might not be too conducive to sticking around. Nonetheless, players, like Uber or Rapido, might be circling that turf at the same time as Porter.
It’s interesting, because logistics might have been seen as some kind of backend function, something dull, monotonous and uns*xy. But, the way we’re engaging online to have commerce brought to our doorsteps, we have to take it a bit more seriously, which may be why Porter got to join the somewhat-evasive unicorn club. Commerce seems to live and die by mobility, so how can logistics not be in the spotlight?
Maybe, all of this means that India’s logistics players might need to better reconnect with India. The real India. The brutal India. Its kiranas or for its MSMEs who aren’t entirely comfortable with English. It might be unglamorous or hard, but could it be that in 2025 and beyond, it’s the only path to real and defensible value in a world where Zepto or Blinkit or BigBasket or Swiggy Instamart might prevail?
With all the 3PL players trying to stay ahead and relevant, who’s going to really deliver? This is just the “trailer”, the story is still to come.
