Update: I have joined the good folks at
@moneycontrolcom
. I will closely track the consumer internet space, with special focus on e-commerce, quick commerce and food delivery, over and above the larger startup and funding scene. Thank you for the welcome, Chandra!
🚨IMP: Nikhil Kamath-backed Third Wave Coffee has fired 100-120 employees in sudden move, months after it raised $35 million. Employees were caught off-guard.
If you're wondering why Blinkit is having a dream run and what it's doing right vs competitors,
@deepsekharc
and I dive deep to tell you its turnaround story.
@chandrarsrikant
From downbeat Grofers to thriving Blinkit: Inside Zomato's brahmastra
This is expected to bring down costs by at least a third for the embattled company.
Google, also one of Dunzo's largest investors, charges at least Rs 1,600 per user per month for its suite of offerings under the enterprise plan but Zoho charges only Rs 489 for the same.
PhonePe is opening its mobile app store to developers and will challenge the Google-Apple duopoly
— Called Indus Appstore, the mobile app marketplace, will charge a zero percent fee on in-app purchases
— Google and Apple levy a 15-30% fee
@tsuvik
reports
Several founders told Moneycontrol that they raised money on air but have never received it till date. That is about 10 months old. Sharks like Anupam Mittal say they need around a year to close a deal. Here's what both sides have to say, story w/
@Unibrowverse
.
@chandrarsrikant
Dunzo had a meeting with senior employees on July 19 and told them that the startup will miss the July 20 deadline for salaries. Late Aug or early Sept new deadline.Employees are losing faith as co waits for some more investor money
@chandrarsrikant
🚨New: Mukund Jha is the second co-founder who is set to exit Dunzo. Y'day Dunzo had announced Dalvir Suri was leaving the company.
-- Suri joined in 2015 and is the CTO of the company.
-- Suri like other co-founders (except Kabeer Biswas) has no equity
@chandrarsrikant
Tata 1mg has aggressive offline expansion plans over the coming six months, becoming the latest online-only startup to go the omnichannel way. However, the plan is to be different from the regular stores, details in this thread
@chandrarsrikant
@moneycontrolcom
Fewer people are using Koo, which continues to see a decline in monthly active users.
MAUs:
~3.1 mn in April 2023
~3.2 mn in March
~3.5 mn in Feb
~4.1 mn in Jan. Down from July 2022, when MAUs were ~9.4 mn.
@chandrarsrikant
@moneycontrolcom
Flipkart's Big Billion Days will be live from Oct 8-15. Interestingly, earlier this week Amazon had notified users that its Great Indian Festival will begin from October 10, but the date has now been removed. The Amazon app now says GIF is “coming soon”.
E-commerce companies are now charging for convenience. Ajio, Myntra and Nykaa Fashion have all begun levying an additional fee of Rs 15-29 (even higher in other cases). The motive: making each order more profitable and boosting the bottom-line
CaratLane’s Mithun Sacheti isn’t the only one walking away with a huge sum of money from the Titan deal.
From the interview: 75 CaratLane employees to take home Rs 340-380 cr in ESOP payout.
@chandrarsrikant
Another operator-turned-founder has raised money for their own startup.
Unacademy’s ex COO Vivek Sinha has raised $11 mn from Matrix, Lightspeed and others, sources said. The new edtech startup has raised money from Oyo’s Ritesh Agarwal & Unacademy’s Gaurav Munjal.
Namita Thapar who mostly said 'meri expertise nahi hai' honoured most of her deals on Shark Tank (conversion rate of 59%) -- highest among the seven sharks from S1. She also invested the most (Rs 7 Cr) seven times more than SUGAR's Vineeta Singh
@chandrarsrikant
@moneycontrolcom
We did a deep dive on Dunzo to bring out everything that’s happened at the startup. From what the cofounders have to say about salaries being delayed, how competitors are faring vs Dunzo, the fundraising plans and everything you need to know about the events
@chandrarsrikant
After Swiggy, Zomato is now charging Rs 2 as platform fee to select users. While that is just 0.5% of Zomato’s AOV (∼ Rs 415), it will still translate to a large amount. Zomato delivered around 17.6 cr orders in June quarter (~roughly 20L/ day). Swiggy does around 15L/day.
A pamphlet distributed at an onboarding centre in HSR Layout promises riders can “earn more than Rs 70,000/month with Ola bike taxi." Very similar to what Ola did ~2011 -- promised cab drivers around Rs 90,000/month initially. The payouts then dropped to ~Rs 25,000
New: Tiger and SoftBank are set to end the funding winter with a $300 mn cheque to Meesho. Peak XV, Mars & UK-based Think are also participating.
A bulk of the money will be used to pay relevant taxes while shifting base from Delaware to India
@chandrarsrikant
and I report
Amazon has revised its seller fee structure, typically an annual exercise. But cos like Mamaearth will be impacted by the revision. Seller fee has been hiked for several categories, including sunscreen, face wash and moisturizer cream -- some of Mamaearth's top products. Contd...
From ITC to Marico, several FMCG players have been buying out smaller D2C players to fill gaps in the portfolios. About 95% of these are slump sales because D2C startups have been unable to scale, Ankur Bisen at Technopak said.
Scaler lays off 150 employees, or 10% of its workforce. Interestingly, in a March 2023 interview, the company boasted of a very strong balance sheet and said it will remain layoff-proof, but a year later at least 150 ppl impacted. Upskilling losing sheen too?
🚨➡️ Breaking: Edtech Scaler has started laying off employees in a bid to reduce redundancy in roles, sources to
@Goenka_Tushar1
&
@MansiVjourno
The layoffs will impact about 150 employees, about 10 percent of the total workforce
Acquired at 40% discount, Ustraa says its valuation can increase 6X in 3 years. The founders are relying on their shares in VLCC for a handsome exit in about three years.
@chandrarsrikant
@moneycontrolcom
Remember SphitiCap? The VC firm signing deals but not transferring the money. Since
@moneycontrolcom
published the story last month, multiple people have reached out to share more.
@chandrarsrikant
Conflict of interest, harsh deal terms: More skeletons tumble out of SphitiCap
It's official: Dalvir Suri is leaving Dunzo.
- Suri, just like co-founders Mukund Jha and Ankur Aggarwal, has no stake in Dunzo. Only Kabeer Biswas has ~ 3.6%, the rest take home a salary and have ESOPs like other employees.
- Suri has tried to quit even in the past
CaratLane and Titan closed the deal, where the latter bought the remaining 27% stake for Rs 4621 cr, in just 7 minutes. How Mithun Sacheti celebrated, life after CaratLane, his advice to founders and lots more in this detailed story.
@chandrarsrikant
Mojocare, health tech startup inflated sales bills and overstated revenues in order to meet its targets, sources told Moneycontrol, in what looked like yet another instance of a corporate governance lapse at an Indian startup.
Interesting stats from Mercedes Benz India MD and CEO Santosh Iyer.
More women are now buying Mercedes cars. Earlier 6-7% of its total revenue used to come from women buyers, now the share is 15%. The company sold off G Wagons (Rs 4 cr each) in 7 mins.
Exactly five years after Walmart bought 77% in Flipkart for $16 bln, early investors have made whopping returns. Accel invested $60-80 mn and earned $1.5-2 bln, Tiger Global put in $1.2 bln and fully exited with $3.5 bln. Also, Binny Bansal no longer has ownership in Flipkart
There’s been a buzz around Zepto raising funds for a while now. It’s also likely to enter the unicorn club.
@chandrarsrikant
and I accessed its pitch deck, spoke to investors and players. A complete lowdown:
🚨New: Karthik Gurumurthy set to leave Swiggy. He’s starting his own venture in the offline space.
Think of it like what Aldi does in Germany etc. Gurumurthy is in talks with Matrix and Accel to raise funds for the latest venture, sources to
@moneycontrolcom
.
@chandrarsrikant
Imp: Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma-backed Pai Platforms has launched PaiPai, a separate shopping app on the ONDC. While Paytm does not own shares in Pai Platforms, the app has been developed by One97 Communications, the fintech major’s parent co.
Zepto becomes the first quick-comm company to levy a platform fee of Rs 2.
Not just that — a late night handling fee also. Zepto is also doing away with free deliveries.
All of it cuz it wants profits.
Grover who didn’t appear in S2, has a solution for when sharks commit but don't invest. “Sharks should be asked to put the money they plan to invest in an escrow account. That way there is accountability and a budget, which ensures that none of them over-commit and later cancel
🚨🚨 Sharks or Dolphins? Ashneer Grover fires salvo amid escalating founder-investor rift on Shark Tank India
Good one by
@Unibrowverse
&
@Goenka_Tushar1
Rocky road? Lightrock India partner and CFO Kushal Agrawal to leave by month-end
Lightrock backs Dunzo, Porter, PharmEasy, Shiprocket and many more startups in India. The story has a lot of details on what is happening at Lightrock.
Did you know for every brand that manages to list on qcomm apps, there are roughly eight brands that lose out, as per estimates. Yet, everyone trudges on. It’s a dogfight.
Small brands are left high and dry in the ‘space race’ of quick-commerce
Over the last several months, Koo, the home-grown microblogging platform, has forced employees to voluntarily resign instead of directly terminating them, as it resorted to workforce reduction to keep costs in check, former staff members told Moneycontrol.
The food delivery space has seen many brands with deep pockets come and perish, and they all had one thing in common: fighting in the same category with little to no differentiation in offerings when compared to the two primary players in the business, Swiggy & Zomato
Hike in fee from April 7:
Sunscreens: from 2.5-8% to 6.5-9.5%
Face washes: from 2.5-8% to 6-9%
Moisturizer cream: from 2.5-8% to 6.5-9.5%
Other beauty products: from 2.5-8% to 6.5-9%
*not exhaustive
Mamaearth's Varun Alagh said the co is treated like any other seller...
New: Astrotalk is raising $30 mn from StepStone and Elev8 two months after it raised $20 mn from Left Lane Capital. The round is valuing the startup at $250-280 mn, up from $200 mn in February this year,
@chandrarsrikant
and I report
Details on Swiggy's biz in the story below where Rohit Kapoor, CEO of food delivery unit says valuation markdowns are not in the co's control. We also hear from sources that Swiggy's monthly cash burn now at $16-18 mn down from $45-50 mn in 2021.
@chandrarsrikant
and I report...
Star India, which boasted a valuation of $15 billion in 2018 (at the time of Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox), saw a considerable reduction in value to $3.2 billion acc to the new JV.
Niyo, a neobanking startup backed by the likes of Accel and Lightrock, is planning to launch a travel tech platform in the next few weeks, people familiar with the development said.
@chandrarsrikant
Meesho turned profitable on a PAT basis in July (low single digit). While that was a positive sign for the company, there are still chances it does not end FY24 in the black. More on the cash reserves, FY23 performance and M&A plans.
@chandrarsrikant
Zepto's latest bet: private label meat delivery. Started 6 months back, Relish is already clocking Rs 150 crore in ARR. The brand can be a Rs 1,000-crore business in 18-24 months, as per the co. What does it mean for players like Licious and FTH?
Udaan, which $340 mn last week (one of the largest this year), has fired 150 employees. The move is a result of a change in business ops.
@chandrarsrikant
and I bring you the details.
2nd time udaan has sacked staffers just after announcing a fundraise
SphitiCap: The VC fund inking deals without transferring funds
— not a single penny has been transferred since Oct’22
— Also awaits SEBI approval
— Relatively unknown despite claiming to have a corpus of $500 mn.
@chandrarsrikant
.
@BKartRed
on GreyOrange. Blume was among the first VCs to back the robotics and automation company around 2013. The company has raised over $400 mn since then.
"GreyOrange is one of India's proudest deep tech exports and despite a massive shift in how warehouse automation is being adopted in the US...We think it can be the first billion dollar revenue company in deep tech from India and are proud to further back GreyOrange's growth…
New: Zomato has forayed into logistics, with the launch of Xtreme. It is primarily targeting merchants who want to send or receive small packages weighing 10 kgs or below.
Details below in the story w/
@tsuvik
Bumping up our story from last night where Dunzo promised to pay 12% yearly interest on the portion of salaries it held back.
@chandrarsrikant
@moneycontrolcom
Swiggy to buy back ESOPs worth $50 mn. This will be the company’s fourth ESOP liquidation since 2018 and values Swiggy at ∼$8.7 billion, which is closer to the market cap of Zomato, its BSE-listed peer, Moneycontrol has learnt.
@chandrarsrikant
New: Meesho gets investor interest for a larger round of around $500-650 mn, per sources. We had earlier reported that the company is raising $300 mn but since then, there has been more inbound.
Tata 1mg on PharmEasy: Some things that we did right, and some that PharmEasy got wrong…We stayed consistent on the pricing which helped us. We didn’t go crazy when the times were good, and not go bonkers when the times were bad.
@nainasood
Flipkart asks senior executives to work from office five days a week. Includes all execs, who are designated as senior directors and above, per sources.
It is also mulling on extending this to Directors but hasn’t made a decision yet.
@chandrarsrikant
Not long back onions used to make us cry, now it's tomatoes! Read how the taste of your favourite dishes have changed over the past few days. From salads to pizzas...
W/
@ChristinMP_
.
@chandrarsrikant
If you’ve been wondering if ONDC is really cheaper than Zomato/Swiggy and are confused with everything floating around on social media, this is one copy you must read to get a complete understanding.
“We think in the next 10 years, there won't be any aspect of our business that won't be transformed in some meaningful way by this (generative AI). There won't be any way that we do our business today that AI won’t transform,” Amazon's Russell Grandinetti
Licious says it is putting itself on a path to profitability. The result? Flat sales. Internal docs show monthly revenues stayed in in Rs 62-68 cr range so in FY24
- (ARR of Rs 759.9 cr vs Rs 706 cr in FY22 and Rs 700 cr in FY23)
- Monthly cash burn in the Rs 22-26 cr range
Amazon launches shopping-only Prime tier to take on Flipkart VIP
Titled Prime Shopping Edition, the membership is available to users at Rs 399/year and offers free shipping, one-day deliveries and other shopping-related benefits only.
New: Invesco has raised IPO-bound Swiggy's valuation for second time in a row to $8.3 billion, after back-to-back cuts in the past months.
Remember, despite the mark up, Swiggy is valued at lower than $10.7 billion in Jan’22
@AihikS
and I report.
Sources tell Moneycontrol that the number could increase even further as Mensa admitted that the performance of some companies it acquired has been slowing down.
Mensa Brands has fired at least 200 employees across divisions, with India Lifestyle Network (ILN) being the most affected.
Read more about it 👇
by
@Goenka_Tushar1
|
#Mensa
#Layoffs
@chandrarsrikant
@moneycontrolcom
Fun fact: Zomato delivers some of Tata 1mg's orders. Not large volumes, less than 2% of the total but the company is looking at newer ways to solve for last-mile connectivity.
Tata Digital's incoming CEO Naveen Tahilyani has his job cut out. His former colleagues call him a 'rockstar' CEO and if there's "...anyone can pull this off, it's him,”
@chandrarsrikant
and I with details on “the man, the machine (in a good way),”
One app, many options: Zomato now allows users to build carts from multiple restaurants
The new feature comes at a time when the food delivery market has been slowing.
@hrprya
and I report for
@moneycontrolcom
.
@chandrarsrikant
A key difference between Instacafe and Zepto Cafe: the latter buys from brands in bulk, ships it to dark stores, and later sells the snacks to customers. While most of the food items on Instacafe are unbranded and are sourced by the dark store managers. More below w/
@hrprya
🚨🆕Swiggy Instamart begins cafe services in a bid to increase basket size, margins
Instacafe, Swiggy’s latest pilot, will offer pre-cooked snacks in certain pockets of Bengaluru and Hyderabad, much like Zepto Cafe does in Mumbai.
US-based GE is preparing to cut as many as 1,000 jobs in LM Wind Power, the Denmark based company it acquired for $1.65B in 2017. The plan is to be leaner and more profitable as competition intensifies. Indian engineers could be impacted as well
New: Beardo, a D2C firm Marico acquired in 2020, has seen a churn at the top-level. Beardo’s CEO Sujot Malhotra is away on a year-long sabbatical and other execs have quit.
Darayus Mehta and Ketan Jain are no longer with co.
@chandrarsrikant
Details:
Things are finally looking up for Dunzo as it lines up a $25-30 mn round. Sources add that Reliance will invest on a pro-rata basis which essentially means it will further increase its stake in the q-comm startup. It already owns 25.8% in Dunzo.
@chandrarsrikant
DealShare gives up office space in Bengaluru, lowers monthly rental cost by Rs 25L
DealShare was paying a monthly rent of around Rs 40L. Over the past months Byju’s and Dunzo have also given up their offices in Bengaluru to cut costs.
@chandrarsrikant
New-age cos like Zomato, Policybazaar, Delhivery all turned profitable in Q3FY24. Nykaa and Mamaearth further grew profits.
-lower discretionary spends
-economies of scale
-slower growth
And what it means for upcoming IPOs,
@deepsekharc
and I report
I remember Dunzo being in talks to raised $200 mn earlier this year but that money never came through. It instead got $75 mn in just April but it already seems to have cashflow issues
Dunzo has told employees that they will receive no more than Rs 75k per month, even if they earn more. The co has promised to clear the pending amount by July 20, here’s what sources tell us.
@chandrarsrikant
@moneycontrolcom
New: Livspace is in talks to raise $20-25 million from existing investor KKR. The company was last valued at $1.2 bln but is being valued at around $700 mn during the ongoing negotiations, sources to Moneycontrol.
A founder said that they had raised debt from a shark but later found out that the particular shark/company did not have a valid licence to even issue debt. A lot more details on how the two sides see the situation:
Each store will be about 400-500 sq feet in size. While those are not very large, they’re bigger than the typical mom-and-pop pharmacies, which are just 150-200 sq feet in size. Tata 1mg will will always operate all its offline stores and does not plan to give out franchises.
As early-stage VCs raise larger funds, their cheque sizes have also increased. Micro VCs and family offices are chipping in to fill some of the gaps and in the process, some founders are losing out because not all startups are being funded.
For starters, food is already cheaper on Waayu and Thrive (vs Zomato/Swiggy) because restaurants list a pizza for at least 20% lesser on these apps. Nope, not discounts. The same pizza is priced at Rs 300 on Z/S, but Rs 240 on Waayu, Thrive
The Sleep Company is lining up $15-20 mn in fresh capital from Premji Invest and Fireside. The startup has been doing well and is commanding a significant premium in valuation, sources to
@moneycontrolcom
.
@chandrarsrikant
Catch-22 situation: Analysts said Koo can shore up MAUs, but will need to burn more and investors may not want to take that route. Most consumer internet startups are facing a similar dilemma and the situation is not specific to Koo. All details:
New: LetsTransport is lining up $15 mn from BII, an exisiting investor at a valuation of $80 mn, sharply lower than $220 mn, its last reported valuation. The internal round will also have secondaries. Talks with TPG NewQuest did not materialise.
@chandrarsrikant
@moneycontrolcom
That, along with other details on the AOV (offline vs online), cost to set up a store and profitability timelines in the story here:
We also got data that shows how many employees have been quitting Dunzo since troubles began. What vendors are telling the company and how much is owed in total and how many (of the 120 dark stores remain)
Sandeep Kohli, SVP and head of data centres at Flipkart, is set to leave after over 9 yrs with the co, sources to
@moneycontrolcom
. Kohli is likely to start his own venture.
Kohli joins a growing list of top-level executives who have left Flipkart.
🚨New: Dunzo has informed employees it will not be clearing dues on Sept 4, as promised earlier. It will now be making payments in the first week of October
@moneycontrolcom
@chandrarsrikant
Mamaearth has held talks with Fidelity, GIC, QIA and SoftBank to raise about $120-150 mn ahead of its planned IPO. The deal will also have a secondaries component,
@patwardhannn
and I report.
By charging a fare higher than what is allowed, Rapido could be ruffling some feathers again.
First with bike taxis now with autos
L Hemanth Kumar, add. commissioner for transport: "Rapido is operating services illegally. They cannot charge more than Rs 35 minimum fare…”
Peak XV (then Sequoia Capital India) had discussed Go Colors during a taxi ride in 2014 and was almost convinced a deal was "improbable" because of several low-priced competitors and thought Go Colors did "not have any visible bragging rights." But it took the bet and the reward:
Peak XV Partners scores big with 16X return on investment in Go Fashion. In November 2014, Peak XV (then Sequoia) invested around $10 million in the women’s legwear maker and has now exited the company with a return of $150 million
@Goenka_Tushar1
✍️
Ashneer Grover scoffs and says a one-year timeline is unrealistic for any founder or business. “It’s stupid to take a year to close a deal one has promised on the show. No founder, even the sharks, would ever wait for a year to close a deal. It is unfair to the business.”
@chandrarsrikant
@moneycontrolcom
The company has been piloting about 50 stores in Gurugram, Jaipur, Delhi, Noida and Kolkata and is now gearing up to expand its brick-and-mortar base to about 200-300 stores in cities like Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Mumbai.
This includes why Dunzo didn’t raise an equity round, why it reached where it is today despite being a first mover. Dunzo getting a new CFO, Anoushka Bhatia rumoured to be on her notice period what Akansha Kumari (head of product) said in farewell email etc
Spinny is merging two of its divisions — Truebil (budget cars segment) and Spinny Max (luxury cars). The result? 300 employees fired. Details below
@chandrarsrikant
@moneycontrolcom