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.
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.
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%.
Paytm announced its results for the quarter ended March 2025, showing signs of recovery. Founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma teased a potential return for Paytm wallets, saying they “may be near a breakthrough or some resolution.” This is a significant hint for shareholders following the fintech company’s decline after the RBI restrictions on Paytm Payments Bank. The company is on track for profitability, with strong growth in financial services and merchant subscriptions.
India’s fintech sector has finally been bitten by the gold bug. Fintechs are exploring gold-linked products like digital gold savings, gold loans (credit), and gold exchange-traded funds (ETFs). However, there are two problems for fintechs looking to sell gold products: regulatory hurdles and the small revenue pool. The total revenue pool for Indian fintechs from all major gold-linked products is estimated at about Rs 1,500-2,000 crore annually. The Finance Ministry is preparing a regulatory framework for digital gold, and the RBI is considering rules for gold leasing, following a crackdown on peer-to-peer lending.
CRED is facing a catch-22 situation. The platform, founded by Kunal Shah, spent heavily on growth and acquiring affluent users. Despite substantial revenue growth in FY25 (₹1,473 crore), the company is yet to turn a profit. Its main revenue driver is the loans business (about 85% of FY25 revenue), but the growth rate of loan distribution has suffered a downturn. Analysts suggest CRED may not have enough cash left to build another vertical or sustain its current high valuation without significant fundraising.
