How Porter built India’s biggest intra-city logistics empire

Qureshi, 54, runs a kirana store in Delhi, an operation that requires moving his stock on time everyday, across multiple tranches. Until a few years ago, he relied on a chaotic network of local fleet operators, with varying degrees of success and frustration.

“Sometimes they showed up, sometimes they didn’t. Halfway through a delivery, they’d call saying the vehicle broke down, or suddenly, hike the price,” he said.

One day, help arrived on a smartphone, brought to him by his 24-year-old son. He introduced the senior Qureshi to Porter, a company now known for intra-city logistics—essentially the short-haul movement of goods within city limits.

“My son books goods on the Porter app, for supplies from the mandi to my shop, and sometimes even from my shop to customers,” the kirana owner said. “It can still be chaotic, but most of the time, it works.”

Then there is Anil Sharma, co-founder of Newtreo, a food and beverage brand with yearly sales of ₹16 crore a year. For a long time, he found himself trapped in a frustrating cycle of two-day lead times to deliver his ready-to-eat products—energy drinks, non-alcoholic beer, fruit juices among others—to customers. Using Porter brought that lead time down to two hours.

“We end up using Porter at least three-four times everyday. We don’t mind paying a higher cost…when compared to a local player, there is also far more transparency in pricing,” Sharma said, adding that at times, unorganised transporters hike price by as much as two-fold without any explanation.

Newtreo also uses Delhivery, a larger logistics company, for bigger consignments across different cities. “While Porter is really good for intra-city and smaller shipments, Delhivery is more apt for larger orders,” Sharma said.

In 2014, Uttam Digga, Pranav Goel and Vikas Choudhary, the three founders of Porter, saw the chaos, mistrust, and inefficiency Qureshi and Sharma described. They set out to organize logistics for small businesses by aggregating mini-trucks, inspired by Uber’s ride-hailing model.

The intra-city logistics market has always been a tough nut to crack. Orders are small, margins thin, and fuel costs unforgiving. Not to mention the stiff competition from a web of informal fleet operators. But Porter’s bet on an asset-lite model that caters to small businesses eventually paid off—the company was able to turn what looked like a messy, fragmented market into a system that could generate predictability, revenue, and profit.

In 2024-25, the company’s revenue surged nearly 57% to ₹4,342 crore; it posted its first ever profit of ₹55 crore, from a loss of ₹96 crore a year earlier.

India’s intra-city parcel delivery market, in 2024-25, was estimated at $600–800 million by Redseer, a research firm. Porter leads the pack, well ahead of Rapido, Borzo, Uber, Uncle Delivery and others, with commissions typically at 14–16%, said Mrigank Gutgutia, partner at the firm.

That is not all. The company’s good run includes one of the largest fund raises this year— $200 million—from prominent investors including Kedaara Capital and Wellington Management. The round, which pegged the company’s valuation at around $1.2 billion, is yet to close. The capital raise is likely to touch $300 million, with new investors expected to join the cap table, multiple people familiar with the matter told Mint.

We spoke to nearly a dozen stakeholders, including lawyers, consultants, logistics experts, investors and founder Pranav Goel to understand how the company cracked this difficult market. Their accounts reveal a story of sharp pivots, structural headwinds, and a high stakes balancing act between growth and profitability. That act would continue to shape the company’s trajectory, going ahead.

The unlikely gamble

Porter was not always in the business of short-haul logistics. Like we mentioned earlier, the Bengaluru-based company began as a mini-truck aggregation service, first, by catering to deliveries within cities and then foraying into inter-city operations.

“While we were new to intra-city, we were ambitious,” said founder Goel. “We thought we should also solve for inter-city and larger enterprises within the first year of business. We started multiple businesses which were very different from each other.”

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Doing too many things too early proved costly.

Inter-city and intra-city logistics run on different mechanics. In the first business, operators work with larger shipments, higher margins and the luxury of planning routes a day in advance. Intra-city, on the other hand, is about immediacy—customers expect a vehicle in 5–15 minutes—often for an order worth barely ₹500. Margins are razor-thin, and efficiency depends on real-time allocation.

At the peak of India’s e-commerce boom, Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal were pumping volumes and capital into logistics. Soon, the inter-city segment overheated. Inefficiencies and cash burn made the model unsustainable, quickly cooling investor enthusiasm. Porter, competing with deep-pocketed rivals such as Mahindra’s SmartShift, was burning way too much capital. The founders pulled back.

“The company chose to tighten their belt and took some hard calls to dramatically bring down costs—they shut the inter-city vertical and remained laser focused on their core area,” Sasha Mirchandani, founder and managing partner at Kae Capital, the earliest investor in Porter, said.

The startup, next, figured out a sweet spot.

“The primary issue was severe underutilization. A vehicle, which could do four-five trips a day, was only doing a single trip back then. So, there was a big matchmaking problem between truckers and businesses,” Goel recalled.

There was a big matchmaking problem between truckers and businesses.
— Pranav Goel

Inefficiencies ran the deepest when it came to small businesses.

“They deliberately focused on small and medium businesses while competitors chased larger enterprise accounts or individual customers,” an industry executive said, asking not to be named. “They have built their model on sheer density.”

Porter’s ‘density model’ essentially refers to better asset/fleet utilization by providing the right vehicle at the right price, through faster order matching using its tech platform. The right vehicle could be a bike for a parcel delivery, and small trucks, or even three-wheelers, for heavier loads.

Goel recalled that his team spent months largely on the streets, visiting wholesale markets and interacting with small business clusters. “We would explain how their transportation needs could be done through us. We helped them understand how we could be more reliable; help in bringing down their logistics cost,” he said. “We replicated the same process with truck drivers and vehicle operators, assuring them of better vehicle utilization.”

Porter’s ‘density model’ refers to better asset/fleet utilization by providing the right vehicle at the right price, through faster order matching using its tech platform.

Those early efforts worked. Porter says it now works with about two million small and medium businesses every month.

An investor Mint spoke to, who didn’t want to be identified, said that Porter’s near-monopoly in intra-city logistics is built on sticky small and medium enterprise clients, loyal truckers, and an asset-lite model. “Supply and demand have become fairly concentrated for them. As the marketplace matured, the unit economics also began to show positively,” the person said.

The 2018 moment

A pivotal moment came in February 2018.

The Mahindra Group was scouting for opportunities to invest in the shared mobility sector. It zeroed in on Porter—at that time, it had over 10,000 vehicles on its platform and had executed 15,00,000 deliveries in the previous three years, according to a press statement.

Mahindra announced that SmartShift, its on-demand logistics service, would merge with Porter. The auto-to-software conglomerate also invested ₹65 crore in the two entities.

More than cash, the deal gave the young startup both validation and muscle in a still-fragile market. It unlocked Mahindra’s fleet, a wider customer base, and hard lessons from the ground.

“Logistics is different and complex in every country and being backed by the Mahindra gave them a stronger understanding of the arena. A pure-play financial investor wouldn’t have been able to provide that,” said a person involved in the transaction who didn’t want to be identified.

Mahindra, according to data from Tracxn, went on to increase its bets on Porter in subsequent years.

Since that deal, Porter’s investor roster also expanded to include Tiger Global Management, Vitruvian Partners and Elev8 Venture Partners.

The reshuffle

By mid-2023, Porter felt confident enough to revisit inter-city logistics again, with a courier service offering door-to-door delivery. The company took on rivals such as Delhivery and Ekart head-on.

In 2023, Porter also reshuffled leadership. Uttam Digga became CEO while Goel moved to an executive vice chairman role. Some market watchers said the move reflected the need for sharper execution, as the company was preparing for bigger strategic bets.

“Uttam’s strategy and competency in driving growth, taking risk and operational rigour is unmatched,” Goel said, adding that the transition was based on the company’s ambitions and target for the next decade.

In 2023, Porter reshuffled its leadership. Uttam Digga became CEO while Goel moved to an executive vice chairman role. Some market watchers said the move reflected the need for sharper execution, as the company was preparing for bigger strategic bets.

The transition also coincided with the company taking its foot off the growth accelerator to focus on profitability. Between 2020-21 and 2022-23, losses nearly tripled to ₹175 crore even as revenue grew over fivefold to ₹1,789 crore, according to data from Tracxn. Investors saw the red ink not as weakness, but intent. “The period of widening losses was a function of increased competitive intensity post the pandemic. Porter wanted to focus on growth and ride the online boom. Once they were comfortable with their top line, they made an internal call to bring down losses,” said another investor, requesting anonymity.

The logistics industry, overall, has also seen a reset— companies such as Delhivery, Rapido, Shadowfax and Shiprocket have turned profitable or have cut losses. This is largely a function of investors backing firms that can rein in burn, Mrigank Gutgutia of Redseer noted.

Apart from inter-city logistics, Porter is now planting the seeds for further diversification. It is building out newer revenue streams like packers and movers services (which contributes to 5% of overall revenue), among others. In parallel, the company wants to expand beyond India—it has already started operating in the Middle East and other countries in the Indian subcontinent.

A GST squeeze?

Despite its successes, Porter faces a fresh challenge: The new goods and services tax (GST) regime.

Earlier this month, the Indian government announced rationalisation of indirect taxes, with most products and services falling into two slabs—5% and 18%. But this has created ambiguity for Porter, as its services could be taxed at 18%, up from 5% earlier.

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The GST Council has brought local delivery services via e-commerce operators under the 18% slab, with platforms liable to pay tax under reverse charge if delivery partners are unregistered, explained Ankit Jain, partner at Ved Jain and Associates, a law firm.“This applies to standalone delivery apps like Porter, Uber Delivery or Rapido’s courier services, not to goods platforms such as Amazon or Flipkart where delivery is incidental to the sale of goods,” Jain added.

Meanwhile, the biggest cost for logistics firms, fuel, is kept outside the GST net. So, logistics firms can’t claim credit on it. This could create a cascading tax burden that inflates last-mile logistics costs.

“Every rupee spent on fuel is a sunk cost, pushing up operating expenses,” said Kulraj Ashpnani, partner at Dhruva Advisors, a tax advisory firm.

However, Porter argues it is a ‘digital Goods Transport Agency (GTA),’ while an offline GTA is simply a traditional road transporter that issues a consignment note and falls under the 5% GST bracket.

“We classify ourselves as a digital GTA. The new GST rule seems to be for delivery services meant for convenience of end consumers, unlike Porter, which serves the core goods transportation need for MSMEs,” Goel said. “From a first-principles perspective, I don’t think the government’s intent is to tax digital GTAs differently from traditional offline GTAs—that would create a major disparity. A high digital tax would push MSMEs back to offline channels, which may not be the intent,” he added.

Nevertheless, ‘Digital GTA’ isn’t a formal GST category—it’s an industry shorthand for tech-led platforms.

Goel added that the company is evaluating the impact on its business and hoped that the government will come up with clarifications soon.

“Much of this extra tax will either get baked into what the customer pays or chip away at what the delivery partner earns,” said Satish Meena, co-founder of Datum Intelligence, a research firm. “Platforms themselves can’t really absorb it right now—they’re chasing profitability while pouring capital into growth and new bets.”

Porter, which has navigated many tricky scenarios in the past, and built its unicorn business on the promise of bringing order to mess, now has a new chaos to cut through.