Logistics unicorn Delhivery has charged in an exchange filing that its IPO-bound rival Ecom Express has misstated numbers pertaining to the two companies' shipment volumes, profitability and capacity metrics in its draft red herring prospectus.
For example, Delhivery counts a shipment-even if it is not delivered to the destination and returned to origin-only as a single shipment. Whereas Ecom Express would count it as two shipments since the to and fro transportation are billed separately.
This is also the reason why Delhivery's shipment volume of 740 million in FY24 is not a perfect like-to-like comparison with Ecom Express' shipment volume of 514 million. For Delhivery, though it has actually made this comparison in its DRHP, investors may feel that it has a less significant lead over the former.
For an industry average of 14-18 percent of shipments that return to their origin, the adjusted shipment number for Ecom Express would be in the vicinity of 450 million, according to Delhivery's filing with the exchanges.
This would also affect the cost per shipment comparison-or CPS-between the two companies as estimated by Ecom Express in its DRHP, Delhivery contends. According to Ecom, the cost of shipment is arrived at as costs directly attributable to operations which is computed as total costs less corporate overheads and costs attributable to warehousing services, further divided by total number of shipments handled for the period/financial year.
