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.
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.
It reported losses in Q2 and Q3, its financial services business is reeling and its payments business is growing but earning less. The Gurugram-based fintech needs a turnaround. Since its mid-December initial public offering (IPO), MobiKwik’s shares have fallen by just under 40%. The company’s losses are largely due to its financial services business being severely impacted, despite healthy growth in its payments business. This financial trouble is attributed to sectoral headwinds and a debacle in its P2P lending product with partner Lendbox, which virtually shut down after an RBI circular.
The fintech company is looking to rebuild its financial services business from scratch amid strong regulatory headwinds and will use the IPO’s proceeds to do so.
The 15-year-old cloud services provider has raised a hefty sum, thanks to a timely shift to an AI-first approach. It’s now gearing up for opportunities beyond the private sector amid intensifying competition. In the past four months, E2E Networks has raised more money than it ever did in the 15 years of its existence. Last week, infrastructure major Larsen & Toubro decided to acquire a 21% stake in E2E for Rs 1,407 crore.
As investors in MobiKwik’s P2P lending scheme cry foul over the handling of an RBI rule change, uncertainty looms over the fintech company’s lending business—its strongest growth driver. Many users of a lending scheme offered by MobiKwik are rattled. The Gurugram-headquartered digital payments company, which earlier allowed “anytime withdrawals”, seems to have locked in their investments after the central bank changed a key rule.
The company is aiming for an IPO by August next year. But what exactly is this firm—a financing operation, a tech business, an overvalued minefield of round-tripping or something else entirely? In an efficient physical world, a company like OfBusiness would have no reason to exist. Today, OfBusiness trades both almonds and steel bars on the same platform. These are just two out of the many products it deals in.
