A West Delhi unicorn: Shiprocket's Saahil Goel on the long road to building India's logistics backbone

When Saahil Goel says, “We renamed ourselves to Shiprocket,” he is not talking about a cosmetic rebrand. He is referring to a moment when a 14-year-old company finally recognised what it truly was and what it was meant to build.

“I think for the first time, the whole company felt it,” he says. For the first time, there was a shared belief across the organisation that the business had found its direction. Goel was speaking to Abhishek Singh, Deputy Editor, LiveMint on Mint's popular series Rollin' with the Boss. Watch the full episode below,

This sense of collective clarity did not arrive early. It came after years of false starts, uncomfortable pivots, and learning – often the hard way – what does not scale in India’s e-commerce ecosystem. Today, Shiprocket powers hundreds of thousands of businesses and sits behind a significant share of India’s online commerce. But its origins trace back to a very different place: a Punjabi Bagh childhood, a fascination with computers, and the internet that was still in a nascent phase.

Becoming the “computer guy”

Goel describes himself, without hesitation, as a Punjabi Bagh boy. His early exposure to technology came at home, not in a classroom. His mother, tech-savvy for her time, learned how to use FoxBase, an old database programme. There was a computer in the house when Goel was in the eighth standard, and she taught him how to build simple systems.

By ninth standard, he had discovered HTML. This was the late 1990s, when the internet was still open and largely unstructured. He gravitated towards it instinctively and soon became the school’s go-to computer student, working on the school website, helping friends troubleshoot problems, and experimenting constantly.

In Class 11, he and a friend built a jokes website and monetised it with banner ads. The site was eventually listed on Rediff as the number one jokes website and drew around 100,000 visitors a month.

They made about $1,000, a meaningful amount at the time. The money mattered, but more than that, the experience stayed with him. The internet was no longer abstract. It could be built, shared, and monetised.

The US years and the pull back

After college, split between India and the US, Goel met Gautam Kapoor, who would later become his co-founder. The two did not spend their time discussing formal business plans as much as they discussed ideas and problems. Kapoor was deeply resourceful and operationally sharp, often finding ways to execute where others hesitated.

The partnership worked because their strengths were complementary. Goel brought product and technology thinking, while Kapoor brought execution and on-ground insight.

After graduating, Goel worked at Max before moving back to the US for his MBA and MS. He worked across organisations, but something felt off. “I was doing tech. But it’s not my calling,” he says. Even then, he was clear that he wanted to build a venture of his own.

Discussions with Kapoor began around 2009, but the timing was wrong. Indian e-commerce was still in its early stages. “Timing is extremely important,” Goel says. There was no clear formula for knowing when the time would be right. They tested ideas, relied on instinct, and waited.

Coming back and starting small

The idea that eventually pulled Goel back to India was not logistics. It was websites.

Family members would approach him for help building websites. He assumed there would be a Shopify-like solution in India. There wasn’t. The do-it-yourself infrastructure simply did not exist, and that gap stood out.

Convincing his wife to move back from the US was not easy. Goel recalls framing it as a limited risk: a few years to attempt building something meaningful, with the option to return if it did not work.

They moved back in January 2012. Kapoor had already set up a tiny office, a shop in Jasola owned by Goel’s father that was lying unused. The rent was ₹5,000 a month. They pooled ₹10 lakh each.

“If you want to build a business, behave like a business,” Goel says.

The first version of the company was a store builder, later called CartRocket. Over three years, they signed up around 1,000 merchants paying modest monthly fees. The issue, Goel realised, was not survival. It was scale. The business could grow incrementally, but it would never grow large enough to justify the ambition behind it.

Learning what doesn’t work

The early thesis was inspired by Shopify: simplify enterprise software for small businesses, then add payments and shipping. But India behaved differently.

“India is not website first,” Goel says.

By 2014–15, commerce conversations were already happening on social media. Payments and shipping, the critical layers, refused to bolt on cleanly. Logistics companies were sceptical of e-commerce, and cash on delivery was widely viewed as impractical.

Once again, the company found itself early.

Every time the company ran out of money, it pivoted. CartRocket did not shut down, but it stalled. Craftly followed, a marketplace aimed at long-tail sellers with payments and shipping built in. That phase proved crucial. It exposed the real problem.

For small sellers, logistics was unreliable. Pickups were inconsistent. Delays hurt everyone, sellers, platforms, and consumers. With most orders being cash on delivery, returns were high and margins thin. Shipping, Goel realised, was not an afterthought. It was the experience.

The logistics insight

By 2016–17, the problem statement was clear. Shipping had to be treated like payments, a core layer rather than a backend chore. “When we realised that shipping is a key part of the e-commerce transaction,” Goel says, “we built this in a way where it had never been built before.”

The inspiration came from payment gateways: a single platform connecting multiple providers, accessible to small businesses, and abstracting operational complexity. For businesses selling independently through websites or social media, delivery mattered as much as discovery and conversion. In physical retail, delivery is instant. Online commerce had to recreate trust in a different way.

“If you take away delivery,” Goel explains, “the customer will not buy.” This realisation led to the company’s second major pivot and its most decisive one. The company rebranded as Shiprocket. For the first time, the entire organisation felt aligned.

Building infrastructure, not hype

The vision, Goel says, never changed: enabling MSMEs in India to go digital. What changed was the understanding of how. India, he argues, is structurally different from the US or China. Retail is fragmented. MSMEs are the largest employer. Marketplaces alone cannot absorb the entire economy.

Shiprocket’s approach is to empower individual merchants, whether they sell through websites, WhatsApp, Instagram, or multiple channels, by handling payments, fraud checks, shipping, and cash collection through a single platform. The model is outcome-based. The software is free. Shiprocket earns when merchants earn. “It’s like building infrastructure for India,” Goel says. “As long as you can find the monetisation around it, it’s a very fulfilling goal.”

The Scale

Today, Shiprocket supports around 200,000 businesses on a paying run rate. It processes ₹25,000–30,000 crore in GMV annually. It powers roughly 4.5–5% of India’s total e-commerce and about 20–25% of direct commerce.

More than half of its deliveries go to tier-2 cities. Over time, Shiprocket has delivered to around 140 million consumers, roughly 55% of India’s shopping population.

The average order value on the platform is around ₹1,500, and Goel sees a new wave of customers shopping online for the first time, often from smaller towns.

“It feels like we’ve been waiting for it for 14 years,” he says.

Beyond the business

As the conversation shifts away from logistics, Goel becomes reflective. He speaks about parenting, living with his parents, and how raising children has made him a better manager by teaching patience and perspective. He credits his wife, Neha, for making his journey possible. “There’s no way I can do this” without her support, he says. She runs the home while he builds the company.

Music remains his anchor. A former band member and Metallica fan, he now jams with his daughter, who plays the guitar. “Music is the one thing I can focus on for hours,” he says.

When asked about work-life balance, Goel rejects the idea entirely. He prefers integration. “You can’t compartmentalise,” he says. “You’re at work, you need to do something for your kid. Do it. Come back.”

Ownership, he believes, applies equally to work and family.

Here to stay

Shiprocket has filed its DRHP, signalling IPO plans. Goel does not elaborate beyond that. The focus, as always, is long-term.

“We’re not in this for five years to sell out,” he says. “We’re in it forever.”

The journey from Punjabi Bagh to building logistics infrastructure for India has taken 14 years. It has involved being early, being wrong, and staying long enough to learn.

Sometimes, that is enough to build something that lasts.

Note to Readers: Rollin' with the Boss is a Mint editorial series presented by Rajnigandha. Lexus is the Luxury Partner.