Startup Deep Dive : Xpressbees — from FirstCry spinoff to a .5 billion unicorn with widening losses

XpressBees turned unicorn in February 2022 on a $300 million round that valued it at $1.2 billion — the same year its revenue jumped 88% to ₹1,904 crore ($299 million, at the September 2026 exchange rate used throughout this piece) while its net loss narrowed to just ₹27 crore, the closest the company had ever come to breakeven. Three fiscal years on, revenue has crawled up to ₹2,874 crore but the net loss has ballooned more than thirteen-fold, to ₹370 crore in FY25.

The stranger number sits on the balance sheet, not the income statement: cash and bank balances fell from ₹1,331 crore to ₹172 crore in that single year. XpressBees is still one of the last big, independent, non-listed parcel companies standing in India after Delhivery bought rival Ecom Express in 2025 — and Delhivery’s own chief executive has since said, on an investor call, that he does not see “a reason for them to exist.” This is the story of how a business built on a zero-capex discipline became one of India’s largest logistics unicorns, and why its numbers now look shakier than at almost any point since it turned profitable on paper for one brief year.

Quick facts

What they do

XpressBees is a business-to-business logistics company: its customers are online sellers, marketplaces and D2C brands, not the shoppers who receive the parcels. It runs four lines of business — B2C express delivery (last-mile parcels for e-commerce orders), B2B express (bulk and cargo movement between warehouses and stores), third-party logistics or 3PL (warehousing and order fulfilment on behalf of a brand), and cross-border logistics for international shipments. Its named clients include Meesho, Myntra, Snapdeal, Xiaomi, Paytm, Lenskart and NetMeds, spanning horizontal marketplaces, electronics, fintech and pharmacy. As of March 2025, the company said it worked through a franchise-run network of close to 4,500 service centres and around 250 sortation hubs reaching over 20,000 pin codes, supported by more than 28,000 delivery partners — figures the company has published but that are not independently audited.

The origin

Amitava Saha and Supam Maheshwari had already built and sold one company together, Brainvisa Technologies, between 2000 and 2009, before co-founding FirstCry, the baby-products e-commerce platform, in 2010. Selling diapers and infant products by mail order to young parents across India exposed a problem neither founder could outsource away: the country’s third-party courier networks of the early 2010s could not reliably promise or keep delivery timelines that mattered to anxious new parents. So in 2012, FirstCry built its own delivery arm, FirstCry Express, under a self-imposed constraint — zero capital expenditure, with cost per delivery held to what the company already paid outside courier firms. That discipline forced the team to lease rather than own capacity and to route shipments cleverly instead of throwing capital at the problem. It worked well enough that other e-commerce founders who happened to also be FirstCry’s shipping customers noticed the delivery experience firsthand and asked Saha directly whether his team would handle their parcels too. That external pull, more than an internal five-year plan, is what turned a cost centre into a company: FirstCry Express was spun out as the independent XpressBees in 2015.

The struggle years

XpressBees’ setbacks are recent and financial rather than early and existential, but they are real and dated. In FY23, a year after the company crossed ₹1,900 crore in revenue and came close to breakeven, its net loss surged 566% year-on-year to ₹180.4 crore even as revenue grew a healthy 33% to ₹2,531.5 crore — a reminder that scale alone did not fix the unit economics. The company then clawed back to a wafer-thin, full-year EBITDA profit of ₹5 crore in FY24, its first, calling it an EBITDA-positive year even as the net loss (after depreciation, interest and other costs) still widened 11% to ₹200 crore. That fragile improvement reversed hard in FY25: revenue grew just 0.7%, the net loss jumped 85% to ₹370 crore, EBITDA losses more than doubled to ₹228 crore, and cash and bank balances collapsed from ₹1,331 crore to ₹172 crore in twelve months. Layered on top of the operating swings, a large share of the capital XpressBees has raised has gone to existing shareholders exiting rather than into the business: of the $300 million Series F round in February 2022, $200 million was a secondary sale that let Alibaba partially exit and let China’s CDH Investments exit fully; Elevation Capital separately sold a $25 million stake to Avendus in August 2022 and a further $40 million stake to Malaysia’s Khazanah Nasional in April 2023. Much of what gets reported in headlines as “XpressBees raises funding” has therefore been ownership changing hands, not fresh growth capital landing on the balance sheet.

The turning point

The single event that reshaped XpressBees was the February 2022 Series F round: $300 million led by Blackstone Growth, TPG Growth and ChrysCapital, valuing the company at $1.2 billion and making it India’s eighth unicorn of that year. Look at the numbers on either side of it. Going in, FY21 had been a modest year — revenue of ₹1,010 crore and a net loss of ₹63.4 crore, a company still finding its scale during the pandemic’s e-commerce boom while a better-capitalised Delhivery prepared for its own IPO. Coming out, FY22 was the best year XpressBees has recorded before or since: revenue nearly doubled to ₹1,904.4 crore, the net loss narrowed 57% to ₹27.1 crore, and EBITDA margin turned positive at 2.33%, prompting local trade press to describe the company as having “break-even in sight.” That combination of a marquee unicorn round and a genuinely improving cost base is the moment XpressBees looked, on paper, most like a durable business. Every year since has moved the numbers in the opposite direction.

The money behind it

XpressBees has raised over $620 million across eleven rounds since 2016, according to Inc42’s funding tracker. The shape of that capital changed as the company grew. Early backers SAIF Partners (now Elevation Capital) and IDG Ventures put in roughly $12.5 million in 2016; Alibaba Group began investing from December 2017 and, across further tranches including a 2020 Series D, became the largest single external shareholder at about 17.2% before partially exiting in 2022. A ₹800 crore (about $110 million) Series E in November 2020, from Investcorp, Norwest Venture Partners and Gaja Capital, valued the company above $350 million and funded its expansion into third-party warehousing and heavy cargo. The February 2022 Series F brought in Blackstone Growth, TPG Growth and ChrysCapital alongside existing backers, minting the unicorn valuation. In November 2023, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan’s late-stage arm, Teachers’ Venture Growth, invested $80 million in a Series G that Entrackr reported at a post-money valuation of roughly ₹12,450 crore (about $1.5 billion) — an up round from 2022 — while other trackers such as Inc42 and Tracxn have put the same round’s valuation closer to $1.44 billion. Each backer changed something concrete: Alibaba’s early capital and its own India e-commerce relationships helped XpressBees scale beyond FirstCry; the 2022 private-equity trio brought balance-sheet muscle and governance associated with a pre-IPO company; and Ontario Teachers’ arrival in 2023 signalled long-horizon institutional confidence just as growth was slowing.

How it makes money

XpressBees earns a per-parcel fee from e-commerce sellers and marketplaces for pickup, sorting, line-haul transport and last-mile delivery, plus separate fees for warehousing and order fulfilment (pick, pack and ship) and for handling returns, which are a large and costly feature of Indian online retail. Crucially, the company does not own most of its last-mile capacity. Delivery happens through a franchise network of pickup-and-drop outlets and last-mile delivery partners, who put up their own capital for the outlet and vehicles and keep a share of the per-parcel payout; XpressBees earns the margin between what a marketplace client pays it per parcel and what it, in turn, pays out in franchise commissions, line-haul freight and hub operating costs. Freight and handling alone accounted for ₹2,462 crore, or 73% of total costs, in FY25. That structure explains why the model runs thin: total costs of ₹3,334 crore exceeded total income of ₹2,961 crore in FY25, meaning the marginal parcel delivered that year added to the loss rather than to profit. The part people commonly get wrong is assuming a company this size charges a fixed take rate the way a marketplace does; in reality, almost its entire cost base is a pass-through of fuel, freight and franchise payouts, and the higher-margin warehousing and fulfilment line remained under 2% of revenue even in FY24, leaving the business dependent on thin, competitively priced, per-parcel logistics fees for almost all its income.

The numbers

Read across the row, not down a single column: revenue growth decelerated from 33% (FY23) to 12% (FY24) to 0.7% (FY25), while the net loss kept widening in every year except the unicorn year, FY22.

Where the money comes from

By service line, XpressBees remains overwhelmingly a parcel-delivery business. Courier and logistics services made up roughly 96–97% of operating income in FY24 and FY25. Warehousing and fulfilment, the line the company has talked up as its future, grew 60-fold in FY24 — but from a base so small (₹0.77 crore in FY23) that it reached only about ₹48 crore, still under 2% of revenue; support and other services added a further ₹31 crore. By customer type, its named clients skew heavily toward horizontal e-commerce and quick-turn categories — Meesho, Myntra and Snapdeal on the marketplace side, Xiaomi and Lenskart in electronics and eyewear, Paytm in fintech, NetMeds in pharmacy — rather than a diversified industrial or enterprise-freight base. Geographically, the network is built for India’s more than 20,000 pin codes; cross-border logistics is a named business line, but XpressBees does not publicly break out what share of revenue it contributes, so a genuine geographic split beyond “overwhelmingly domestic” cannot be verified from public filings and is not claimed here. The surprise, three years into talking about diversification, is how little has actually shifted: plain parcel delivery is still doing almost all the work.

The risks

Three risks stand out because the company’s own numbers, or a named rival’s public comments, make the mechanism explicit rather than hypothetical. First, cash is depleting fast: balances fell from ₹1,331 crore to ₹172 crore between FY24 and FY25, the same year EBITDA losses more than doubled to ₹228 crore, which leaves little room to keep funding operating losses from the balance sheet without either fresh capital or a sharp change in unit economics. Second, margins are moving the wrong way in a business with almost no pricing power: EBITDA margin flipped from +0.17% to -7.9% even though revenue grew only 0.7%, because freight and handling costs, already 73% of the cost base, rose faster than the fees e-commerce clients were willing to pay. Third, the competitive landscape is consolidating around it: Delhivery’s ₹1,369 crore acquisition of Ecom Express in 2025 left XpressBees as one of the few sizeable independent players still competing against listed rivals Delhivery, Blue Dart and Shadowfax. On Delhivery’s Q4 FY26 earnings call in May 2026, chief executive Sahil Barua said of XpressBees, “I don’t see a reason for them to exist,” arguing it lacked structural advantages over the listed players and adding that unprofitable rivals had “voluntarily set their balance sheets on fire.” Whether or not that view proves right, a rival’s public willingness to say it signals how exposed an unlisted, loss-making, cash-thinning player looks in this market.

The takeaway

The lesson is not that discipline failed XpressBees — the zero-capex rule that built FirstCry Express is exactly what let a shipping department become an independent unicorn. The lesson is that discipline calibrated at one scale does not automatically survive being multiplied twenty or forty times over. The FY22 numbers that impressed investors were produced by a leaner, smaller network; the FY25 numbers were produced by a much larger one carrying proportionally heavier franchise payouts, freight costs and competitive pricing pressure from listed rivals with public balance sheets. Any founder who scales a lean internal function into a stand-alone company should treat “our unit economics work today” as a claim that needs re-proving at every order of magnitude, not a fact that, once true, stays true.

Frequently asked questions

Who founded XpressBees and when?

Amitava Saha and Supam Maheshwari founded XpressBees in 2015, spinning it out of FirstCry Express, the in-house delivery arm they had built inside FirstCry, the baby-products e-commerce company they co-founded in 2010.

Is XpressBees profitable?

No. It reported a net loss of ₹370 crore in FY25 (year ended March 2025), up 85% from a ₹200 crore loss in FY24. It briefly turned EBITDA-positive, by ₹5 crore, in FY24, but swung to an EBITDA loss of ₹228 crore in FY25.

Who are XpressBees’ biggest shareholders?

Alibaba Group has been its largest external shareholder, reported at about 17.2%, alongside Blackstone Growth, TPG Growth, ChrysCapital, Norwest Venture Partners, Investcorp, Elevation Capital, Ontario Teachers’ Teachers’ Venture Growth and Khazanah Nasional, following rounds between 2016 and 2023.

Is XpressBees planning an IPO?

There is no confirmed DRHP or IPO filing for XpressBees as of September 2026. Industry commentary, including public remarks from Delhivery’s chief executive about sector consolidation, has speculated about its options, but the company has not announced a listing timeline.

How is XpressBees different from Delhivery?

Delhivery is listed on Indian stock exchanges and, after acquiring Ecom Express in 2025, is larger and profitable at points in its recent results; XpressBees is privately held, last valued at roughly $1.4-1.5 billion, and has posted widening losses through FY25. Both compete in e-commerce express parcel delivery, B2B logistics and warehousing.

Sources

Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).

• Wikipedia, “Xpressbees” entry, accessed September 2026
• TechCrunch, “Indian logistics firm Xpressbees becomes unicorn with $300 million fresh funding,” February 2022
• YourStory, “Xpressbees turns unicorn with $300M round from Blackstone, TPG, ChrysCapital,” February 2022
• Business Standard, “Xpressbees raises $300 mn in unicorn round, some major investors exit,” February 2022
• Entrackr, “XpressBees enters unicorn club after $300 Mn Series F round,” February 2022
• Entrackr, “XpressBees secures $110 Mn in Series E round,” November 2020
• Entrackr, “XpressBees crosses Rs 1,900 Cr revenue in FY22, break even in sight,” November 2022
• Inc42, “Logistics Unicorn Xpressbees’ FY22 Revenue Up 1.8X YoY To INR 1,930 Cr, Loss Narrows 57%,” 2022
• Inc42, “Logistics Unicorn Xpressbees’ FY23 Loss Surges Over 500% To INR 180 Cr,” 2023
• Inc42, “Xpressbees’ Loss Widens 11% To INR 200 Cr In FY24,” 2024
• Entrackr, “XpressBees turns EBITDA positive in FY24, warehousing biz grows 60X,” 2024
• Entrackr, “Decoding XpressBees’ $80 Mn Series G round, ESOPs buyback and more,” January 2024
• Entrackr, “XpressBees’ losses soar 85% to Rs 370 Cr in FY25 amid flat revenue,” 2025
• Inc42, “Xpressbees Financials 2026 – Revenue, P&L & Cash Flow,” accessed September 2026
• Entrackr / Inc42, “Elevation Capital sells $40 Mn worth stake in Xpressbees to Khazanah,” April 2023
• Medianama, “No reason for XpressBees to exist: Delhivery’s Sahil Barua,” May 2026
• FounderThesis, “The Two-Unicorn Playbook: How Amitava Saha Built FirstCry & Spun-Off the Logistics Giant, Xpressbees,” accessed September 2026
• TechGraph, “Interview With Amitava Saha, Founder & CEO of XpressBees,” August 2021

Found an error? Write to us and we’ll correct it in the open, dated, on the piece.