ASX-listed VC Touch wrote off its $36 million Sendle investment in June, resurrected it with the merger, then zeroed it again

The downgrade, revealed publicly on Wednesday, sheds light on how one of Sendle’s major financial backers responded to worrying claims about its new merger partner.

Touch Ventures (formerly AP Ventures), which led the logistics startup’s $45 million Series C round in 2021, was already pessimistic about its holdings.

Some follow-on financing rounds, which Touch Ventures did not participate in, had diminished the value of its Sendle holdings in the case of a liquidity event.

Combined with Touch Venture’s sanguine outlook for the Sendle business, the investor valued its Sendle stake at nil in June 2025.

Change came in August, when Sendle merged with US logistics businesses FirstMile and ACI Logistix to form the new parent company Fast Group.

The Fast Group merger, which promised to expose Sendle to a truly global e-commerce delivery network, saw Touch Ventures briefly revalue its stake in the newly formed business to $1.4 million (US$900,000).

But concerns raised by fellow Sendle-slash-Fast Group investor Federation Asset Management in December appeared to dash those hopes.

Federation Asset Management last month froze a fund with major Fast Group holdings, after claiming discrepancies in ACI Logistix’s disclosures.

Those claims rattled Touch Ventures and sent its reported holdings back to zero.

“Touch Ventures has written down its minority investment position in Fast Group (previously Sendle) to nil… to reflect the current publicly available commentary around the business,” it wrote.

“Touch Ventures has not participated in any follow-on round since 2023, and has consequently continued to be diluted as an investor in the company.”

The reason for the June writedown to zero was a deal Sendle did with Federation a month earlier to raise $US5 million ($7.5m) of fresh capital at an eight-times liquidation preference.

That means if the business sold, Federation was guaranteed the first $60m of sale. Preference deals are a regular aspect of later rounds, often to the detriment of earlier investors who don’t participate – if they do, it lets them get to the front of the queue on an exit in what’s known as a pull-through – but generally they’re at 1x or 2x.

Declining to invest further put Touch at the back of the queue, leading to it being at the back of the queue, although the demise of Fast Group makes investor preferences academic.

Sendle closed suddenly on Sunday, giving Australian customers just hours’ notice that their parcels would not be picked up from Monday.

The business is now stuck in a cross-continental quagmire, with investors seeking answers and reassurances from the collapsed FAST Group and its participants.

“As a co-shareholder, Federation is in the same boat as other investors dealing with the issues at Fast Group,” a spokesperson told SmartCompany on Thursday.

Prior to its closure, Federation had “injected emergency capital and brought about management changes to try and resolve a series of issues post the merger,” they said.

“Federation is now pursuing recoveries for investors,” the spokesperson added.

Meanwhile, countless small business customers are still left in the dark.