Samara Capital buys Spoton Logistics for $100 mn from India Equity Partners

In the largest buyout deal in logistics space in recent years, private equity firm Samara Capital is buying the express logistics company Spoton Logistics for $ 100 million from another PE firm India Equity Partners (IEP), said sources in the know.

IEP had bought Spoton from Dutch express delivery firm TNT in 2012.

Samara was recently in news for talks to acquire Aditya Birla Retail. Edelweiss was the banker for IEP and Spoton, sources said.

IEP and Spoton could not be contacted for comments. Edelweiss declined to comment on the deal. “Samara is likely to make Spoton a platform for future logistics investments,” sources said.

Spoton, which covers 18,000 pin codes through its 1,000 plus delivery vehicles, does around 7,500 consignments a day.

Logistics space is seeing M&As and fund raising in the country. TVS Logistics is believed to be in talks to buy another Logistics firm Gati for Rs 15 billion.

Both Future Logistics and Mahindra Logistics have listed on the exchanges in the recent past.

In 2015,  Warburg Pincus has invested over Rs 8.5 billion in Ecom Express, one of the leading logistic solutions providers to the Indian e-commerce industry.

Global funds such as CPPIB, Warbug Pincus have already committed billions of dollars for logistics segment in the country.

In May 2017, IndoSpace and Canadian pension fund manager CPPIB created a joint venture, IndoSpace Core, to acquire and develop logistics facilities in the country. CPPIB has made a commitment of around $1 billion towards IndoSpace’s assets.
 

Singapore-based Ascendas-Singbridge Group announced a joint venture with Firstspace Realty, in June 2017, to set up industrial logistics and warehousing centres in the country. They jointly aim to invest $600 million over the next five to six years and develop around 15 million sq ft of space.
 

In August, LOGOS Group and Assetz Property Group, based in Sydney and Singapore, respectively, partnered to set up a logistics and warehousing platform that would invest to develop logistics and industrial parks in the country.

A number of domestic funds such as Piramal Capital & Housing Finance, Kotak Realty Fund, Milestone Capital, Nisus Finance and others are looking at investing in logistics and warehousing space.

Piramal Capital & Housing Finance, which entered the segment in last financial year, has invested over Rs 10 billion in JM Baxi Group, Apollo LogiSolutions and Casa Grande and looking to invest more in the segment.