Future Supply Chain Solutions announced that it will fully acquire e-commerce giant, Snapdeal’s primary logistics arm Vulcan Express in a Rs 35 crore all cash deal.

“Through Vulcan, we plan to boost our last mile capabilities and also offer state of the art solutions to our e-commerce and retail clients , including realising our disruptive vision of Retail 3.0,” said Kishore Biyani, Founder and Chairman of Future Group, in a statement.

Vulcan Express is the logistics arm of Jasper InfoTech, which also owns and operates the online marketplace Snapdeal. The sale of Vulcan is the second one of its kind by Jasper InfoTech over the past six months. The company has been offloading what it has deemed to be non-core assets in an attempt to raise cash and re-align its focus on its core marketplace operations.

Last year Snapdeal successfully fought off a takeover bid by Flipkart, a bid that was being engineered by the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank. Thereafter it shifted a pure marketplace model which has been popularly dubbed as Snapdeal 2.0 and is loosely based on the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s TaoBao platform.

“Similar to our recent sale of FreeCharge ,we believe Snapdeal’s sale of Vulcan Express to Future Group is a successful deal for all three parties-Snapdeal divests off an asset that is non-strategic in nature for Snapdeal 2.0 ,allowing it to focus its capital and management on its core e-commerce business,” said Jason Kothari, Chief Strategy and Investment Officer at Snapdeal.

Vulcan Express was founded in 2014 and its primary clientele includes Snapdeal, Airtel and UPS. The company renders end-to-end logistics services to its clients including warehousing, line haul and transportation, last-mile distribution, quality control, refurbishment of goods and reverse logistics services. The logistics arm had been previously evaluated by numerous bidders including TVS Logistics, Alicargo and the private equity firm Warburg Pincus ,among others.

The Future Supply Chain has over 44 warehouses, 14 logistics hubs, 106 branches and over 4.2 million square feet of warehousing space, across the country. The company’s pan-India network provides services and solutions to the Future Group as well as other third party clients across contract logistics, express logistics and temperature controlled logistics.

The Future Group has been on an acquisition spree for a considerable amount of time now. In October of last year, Future Retail announced its share purchase agreement (SPA) with Shoppers Stop for its purchase of HyperCity Retail in a Rs 655 crore stock-and-cash deal. Furthermore, last week Future Retail announced its decision to fully acquire Travel News Services India in a Rs 100 crore deal, a move that will help the company strengthen its position in the retail sector.

“This association is being recognised to be one of the most significant developments in that logistics industry in India….Vulcan’s capabilities will be of big value to Future Supply Chain in enhancing its footprint and services,” said Vulcan Express CEO Hardeep Singh, in an internal mail to employees as per news reports.

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