Indian logistics company Delhivery has publicly challenged the accuracy of metrics provided by rival Ecom Express Ltd in its draft initial public offering prospectus, in a rare standoff ahead of the company's market debut.
Delhivery, which is backed by SoftBank and is already publicly listed, claims that Ecom Express misrepresented Delhivery's business metrics in a comparative analysis in its IPO filing.
According to a 442-page draft prospectus (PDF) filed by Ecom Express last month, the company plans to ship 514.41 million packages in the fiscal year ending March 2024, while Delhivery handled 740 million packages in the same period.
Delhivery, in a stock exchange filing on Friday, argued that the comparison was flawed, and that what it considers one shipment was counted as two by its competitors, potentially inflating Ecom Express's volumes. Delhivery said its competitors were counting return orders as two shipments.
Delhivery also criticised Ecom Express's calculation of cost per shipment (CPS) for inflated volumes, citing discrepancies in accounting methodology.
The SoftBank-backed company also pointed out that Ecom Express' claim that it serves 27,000 postal codes is inaccurate as India has fewer than 19,500 unique postal codes.
A slide from Delhivery's filing on Friday. Image credit: Delhivery/BSE
The public spat comes less than a month after Ecom Express, backed by Warburg Pincus, Partners Group and British International Investment, filed for an IPO seeking to raise $310 million.
Delhivery has also questioned the way Ecom Express has presented its services EBITDA and corporate costs, citing inconsistent definitions of these metrics in the prospectus.
Ecom Express did not immediately respond to a request for comment.