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.
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.
PB Fintech’s quarterly results were impressive, showing remarkable growth in revenue and a zoom in profits. However, the market’s reaction was subdued, and analysts are divided between buy and sell recommendations. Caution is needed because two of the leading products—Policybazaar and PaisaBazaar—yielded low margins. Furthermore, the credit business, especially unsecured lending, is slowing down following mandates from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Another risk is the potential for policy lapses leading to clawbacks on commissions already booked as revenue.
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.
In the week gone by, this is the second such sale by the content-to-commerce company as it struggles for funds. The Good Glamm Group has signed an agreement to sell its media property ScoopWhoop to marketing company Wubba Lubba Dub Dub (WLDD) in an all-cash deal of Rs 20 crore. The deal, signed on February 15, is an all-asset sale, meaning WLDD acquired the intellectual property assets but not any of ScoopWhoop’s liabilities. This follows the sale of Sirona back to its original founders.
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.
India’s opposition Congress party has alleged that India’s Modi government has taken steps to ease the process of privatizing the Container Corporation of India (CCI) in order to expedite a takeover by the Adani Group. The Opposition has warned of a potential Adani monopoly over India’s import-export transport infrastructure.
