South Africa’s Imperial Group has acquired 60% of eCommerce logistics business, ParcelNinja effective 1 February 2021.
The acquisition will see ParcelNinja expand its reach as well as remain sustainable. Imperial Group, through its Imperial Venture Fund, invested in Lori Systems for its pan-African expansion.
According to Mohammed Akoojee, Imperial’s Group Chief Executive Officer, “Our digital strategy is a key enabler of our purpose, allowing us to build partnerships across our ecosystem, and to identify, pre-empt, integrate and own potentially disruptive technologies and businesses. Our digital strategy is both a driver of, and facilitated by, our ‘One Imperial’ strategy, and expanding our services into eCommerce, eFulfillment and digital freight exchanges is an important component of this strategic pillar.”
Launched in 2014, ParcelNinja picks and packs over 18 000 items for around 3 000 orders per day, the 6 100 m² warehouse in Johannesburg hosts upwards of half a million items on behalf of online shops across South Africa.
ParcelNinja offers an outsourced warehousing and fulfilment business to South African online shops, using its custom-developed best-of-breed warehouse system and fulfilment network to ensure that clients benefit from scalable infrastructure and an innovative costing model.
In March 2015, ParcelNinja attracted a R20 million investment from UK-based C5 Holdings, to help it disrupt the local online shopping market.
C5 Holdings is the parent company of C5 Capital, the London-based specialist data and cyber security fund manager. The Gauteng-based ecommerce solutions company was launched by Justin Drennan, Ryan Drennan, and Terence Murphy who are experienced entrepreneurs, starting WantItAll, helping grow Superbalist, which was sold to Takealot and partnering with Makro to handle a large part of their company’s ecommerce needs.
Through Parcelninja the trio shifted their focus to becoming an ecommerce enabler, making it possible for online shops to outsource most of their ecommerce needs. Our services boast deep integration into existing e-commerce engines, smart product warehousing, picking and packing, Courier LiveQuote™ and robust real-time reporting.
With the cash injection from C5 Holdings, the firm said it would grow its operations in South Africa, and significantly increase the number of companies it works. The acquisition by Imperial gives it the energy it needed to thrive and serve more customers in the SA market.
“Imperial brings strong logistics execution ability and an extensive client-base that is relevant and focused on time-sensitive transactions, enabling ParcelNinja to focus on its strength of rapid systems development and deployment,” says Akoojee. “Joining forces with Imperial is the next logical step in ParcelNinja’s journey to expand its reach while remaining sustainable. We are excited to welcome the ParcelNinja team on board and look forward to leveraging this partnership to expand our offering in both B2B and B2C channels for our clients and their customers.”