Out to list. Pine Labs is a hardware business pretending to be a fintech. Pine Labs was injected with vast amounts of VC money. The hope was that the hardware would trade for higher multiples. The core of the company is its POS machines. Pine Labs has a strong core of large retail chains. The company is trying to grow with new products and in new regions.
JSW, Tata, Birla’s entry into B2B e-commerce augurs poorly for Infra.Market, OfBusiness. For almost a decade, B2B e-commerce has been the domain of startups like Infra.Market and OfBusiness. Now, conglomerates like Tata, JSW, and Aditya Birla Group have launched their own marketplaces. The big manufacturers launching their own shop fronts are turning rivals for Infra.Market and OfBusiness.
Over the past week, restaurateurs have been talking about being subjected to advertising campaigns and unauthorized promotions by the food delivery platforms, often without prior consent or even knowledge. Restaurant owners confirm the practices, noting that often only major incidents get caught. The systemic squeeze on restaurants is a byproduct of the food delivery market’s state. Growth for the platforms has nearly stopped, and in this saturated market, the only way to grow is to take a bigger share from existing stakeholders: restaurants and customers.
It is the first e-commerce company that the RBI has given permission to directly give loans. E-commerce giant Flipkart has secured an NBFC (non-banking financial company) licence from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Its group entity, Flipkart Finance Private Limited, was granted the approval and registered as an NBFC on March 13. This allows Flipkart to directly disburse loans, a higher margin play than just distributing loans for other lenders. Flipkart is also in the process of shifting its holding company from Singapore to India as a precursor to an IPO.
The Zerodha cofounder attributes reduced market activity for the stockbroking business witnessing a 10-20% decline this year. Nithin Kamath expects the stockbroking business to see a 10-20% decline this year following lower market activity in the first quarter. Despite the slowdown, he expects Zerodha to cross Rs 10,000 crore in revenue in FY26. Zerodha reported a revenue of Rs 8,320 crore and a profit of Rs 4,700 crore in FY24, a 21% increase on the previous year. Kamath also reiterated that Zerodha is not considering listing on stock exchanges.
Digio, founded by Nithin Kamath and Abhimanyu Pandian, has “slowly and silently become the back-end infrastructure provider to several industries”. The software-as-a-service (SaaS) company offers a suite of tools built around reducing paperwork, including Know Your Customer (KYC) checks, document management, compliance monitoring, and financial information aggregation. It was an early player in the space and quickly onboarded most of the stockbrokers and e-signing players. What sets Digio apart is its all-round product, focusing on the “forefront of India’s paperless digital transformation”.
The down round will help stabilize the Kunal Shah-helmed fintech’s runway as it tackles headwinds in unsecured lending. CRED is close to announcing a deal to raise $75 million from existing investors, with the round being led by Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC. The deal values the company at $3.5 billion, a decrease from its $6.4 billion valuation in 2022. The company reported revenue of Rs 2,473 crore and a loss of Rs 1,644 crore in FY23-24.
A two-judge bench of the Supreme Court on Monday temporarily stopped the liquidation of Bhushan Power and Steel Ltd (BPSL). This halts proceedings at the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) until at least June 2, which is JSW Steel’s deadline to file a review petition on the apex court’s May 2 verdict. The apex court had scrapped JSW Steel’s 2021 acquisition of the then-insolvent steelmaker under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) and ordered BPSL’s liquidation. JSW argued that liquidation would jeopardize its intended review petition.
The worst may be over for MobiKwik. The Gurugram-based fintech company ended the 2024–25 fiscal year with a loss of ₹121 crore, down from a profit of ₹14 crore in the previous year. Higher losses are a result of its risky lending business, which ran into trouble after the Reserve Bank of India’s nudge last year to slow down unsecured lending. The company has pivoted its focus to higher-ticket, longer-term loans. Its payments business remains strong, with non-UPI payments making up 68% of processed payments, up from 37%.
