Alibaba invests Rs 224 crore in logistics co Xpressbees

Chinese online commerce giant Alibaba has made an investment of Rs 224 crore in the logistics arm of FirstCry, Xpressbees, as per latest regulatory documents filed with the Registrar of Companies (RoC).

Xpressbees, the logistics firm focused on logistics, run by Busybees Logistics Solutions Pvt Ltd has issued 70, 653 series D preference shares to Alibaba, as per documents sourced from business research firm Paper.vc.

The development comes at a time when the Chinese e-commerce giant has also invested in online grocer BigBasket.

Prior to Alibaba backing, the company had raised about Rs 360 crore from investors such as SAIF Partners, IDG Ventures, Paytm, Vertex Ventures, and Kris Gopalakrishnan's Pratithi Trust.

Alibaba, for more than a year, has been scouting for an investment in the logistics space and it had similar talks with other players in the space including Delhivery and Ecomm Express--both of them compete with Xpressbees. People aware of Alibaba's plans have indicated that the e-commerce major will eventually like to utilise this investment for logistics need of other investments of Alibaba here. Alibaba led a $200 million investment round in Paytm's online commerce business under Paytm Mall.

For fiscal year 2017, the company reported revenue of Rs 185.42 crore while losses amount to Rs 57.71crore.