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BT Exclusive: At least 90% of India’s foreign domiciled unicorns will flip back to India, says Siddarth Pai

Business TodayBusiness Today · 9m ago
BT Exclusive: At least 90% of India’s foreign domiciled unicorns will flip back to India, says Siddarth Pai
Medial

- Reverse flipping is a growing trend in the Indian start-up landscape, with companies like PhonePe and Groww successfully completing the transition. - Reverse flipping involves relocating assets, operations, and intellectual property rights from foreign bases back to India. - The dislocation between headquarters and operations has been a concern for Indian start-ups, and a simplified structure in India can result in less friction with authorities and ease of management. - Investor sentiment, both local and global, towards Indian start-ups is improving, and the shift back to India is driven by the higher value creation in the Indian market and the inability of the Indian public to participate in IPOs of overseas entities. - The Indian government's policies and infrastructure need improvements, such as a tax-free redomicile process, greater flexibility in issuing instruments, easier M&A norms, and a stronger corporate law system with dedicated courts. - It is expected that a significant number of foreign-domiciled unicorns and funded start-ups will flip back to India, with non-funded start-ups also likely to join the trend.

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Exclusive: Pine Labs elevates CEO Amrish Rau to MD and Chairman

EntrackrEntrackr · 3m ago
Exclusive: Pine Labs elevates CEO Amrish Rau to MD and Chairman
Medial

Exclusive: Pine Labs elevates CEO Amrish Rau to MD and Chairman Pine Labs, a merchant commerce and payments platform, has promoted its Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Amrish Rau, from the role of Additional Director to Managing Director and Chairman. His elevation comes as the company prepares for its Initial Public Offering. Importantly, Rau continues to be the CEO of the Peak XV-backed firm. The board of Pine Labs has passed a resolution appointing Amrish Rau as the Managing Director and Chairman of the company for a five-year term, effective March 24, 2025, according to its filing with the Registrar of Companies (RoC). Rau joined Pine Labs as its CEO in March 2020. Prior to this, he was chief executive of Prosus-backed PayU India. Pine Labs recently received final approval from the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) to reverse flip its Singapore-based entity back to India. With this move, the fintech unicorn joined other Indian unicorn companies such as PhonePe, Groww, Zepto, and Dream11, which also relocated their headquarters back to India recently. The payments firm is eyeing to launch an IPO in the second half of 2025. As per media reports, the company is eyeing a $1 billion public issue and would comprise of issue of fresh equity shares and an offer for sale (OFS). Pine Labs is a merchant commerce platform that offers POS (point of sale) services which let merchants accept plastic cards and QR-based payments in their stores. It also offers Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL), invoice management, and gifting solutions. According to data intelligence startup TheKredible, Pine Labs has raised nearly $1.3 billion in funding to date from investors including Peak XV Partners, Temasek, PayPal, Mastercard, and others. The company currently holds a valuation of $5 billion. While Pine Labs is in the final stages of relocating its domicile from overseas back to India, a number of other startups—including Razorpay, Meesho, KreditBee, Udaan, Livspace, and several others—are also actively working on shifting their domiciles to India.

Exclusive: InCred Capital to raise $50 Mn led by family offices

EntrackrEntrackr · 9m ago
Exclusive: InCred Capital to raise $50 Mn led by family offices
Medial

InCred Capital, the wealth and institutional arm of the InCred Group, is in advanced discussions to raise $50 million, according to two sources familiar with the details of the deal. “The new funding round is driven by the company’s strong performance in the first half of FY25, with an average revenue run rate of Rs 800 crore and a profit before tax of around Rs 200 crore,” said one of the sources, who requested anonymity as talks are private. As a full-stack financial services platform, InCred Capital integrates wealth management, asset management, M&A, capital markets, equity research and broking, as well as equity derivatives. InCred Capital’s investment banking division has been in the news recently for several notable transactions, including capital raises for Oyo, E2E, Ugro, and Indiabulls. The platform has amassed over $5 billion in AUM, spanning family offices, high net worth individuals, corporate treasuries, and institutional clients. Lead investors in InCred Capital’s new round include Ranjan Pai, through the Manipal family office, the Motherson Sumi family office, MMG family office, as well as the founder Bhupinder Singh himself, according to another source who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. “The company’s valuation is expected to range between $550 million and $600 million,” said the above-mentioned source. Entrackr’s queries to InCred on Friday remained unanswered at the time of publication, while inquiries to the aforementioned investor did not receive immediate responses. InCred Group’s lending arm, InCred Finance, was one of two companies to achieve unicorn status in 2023, raising $60 million in a Series D round led by Ranjan Pai of MEMG and others. Entrackr had exclusively reported on the firm’s unicorn round, which valued the company at $1.03 billion. In FY24, InCred Finance’s assets under management (AUM) saw a 49% increase, exceeding Rs 9,000 crore across personal, MSME, and educational loans, with overseas education loans experiencing rapid growth. In an interview with Entrackr, InCred Group founder and CEO Bhupinder Singh highlighted the strong demand for studying abroad, fueled by better exposure and overall growth prospects. In 2022, InCred Finance completed a reverse merger with KKR India’s credit arm, acquiring KKR’s corporate loan book. However, the corporate loan book was wound down shortly after, allowing InCred to shift its focus to building a tech-enabled retail and MSME franchise.

Exclusive: ReshaMandi faces complete layoffs, website shutdown, and auditor red flag

EntrackrEntrackr · 11m ago
Exclusive: ReshaMandi faces complete layoffs, website shutdown, and auditor red flag
Medial

The road for ReshaMandi appears to have come to an end as the firm has laid off its entire workforce, sources close to the firm told Entrackr. Significantly, the Creation Investments-backed firm’s website has been down for the past week, coinciding with the resignation of its auditor. “It’s all over for ReshaMandi,” said one of the sources requesting anonymity. “The company is struggling to pay liabilities and bear operational costs including salaries for the past several months.” Team Entrackr has also been trying to access its website since Wednesday last week but it’s not working until the press time. ReshaMandi has been embroiled in corporate governance issues including revenue inflation and fake invoices among others. A few alarming issues were also highlighted by its auditor Walker Chandiok & Co LLP which also resigned last month, the regulatory filing accessed from the Registrar of Companies (RoC) shows. The auditor stated that Saurabh Kumar Agarwal, the CTO, and founder, acknowledged the firm’s financial struggles, including downsizing operations, reducing staff, and the inability to support the audit firm’s efforts to complete the financial statements for FY23. Filings reveal that ReshaMandi owes Rs 14.16 lakh to the auditing firm for services offered. Meanwhile, the Bengaluru-based company also appointed a new auditor Suresh Kapoor & Associates in late July. ReshaMandi also saw back to back resignations of its chief financial officers (CFO). In April 2023, the firm appointed former KPMG CFO Samadrita Chakravarty as its group CFO who took over Ritesh Kumar. Kumar served as CFO between March 2022 to January 2023. As per an Inc42 report, Chakravarty also quit the firm in October last year. Commenting on Entrackr’s queries, a ReshaMandi spokesperson said, “ReshaMandi is facing some financial difficulties and has streamlined its staff, operations and processes to focus on collecting its pending receivables from the market. We continue to believe in coming out of this situation strong and be able to get back on track soon.” The company’s co-founder Mayank Tiwari chose not to address the specific question about the layoffs. ReshaMandi has raised more than $50 million including a $30 million Series A round in October 2021. In June 2022, it also initiated a new funding round and raised a $6.2 million debt in November 2022. The firm’s investors include Creation Investments, Omnivore, 9 Unicorns, Venture Catalysts, Northern Arc, Innoven Capital, and Stride Ventures. As per media reports, it was reportedly in talks to raise $5 million at much lower valuation to clear the long pending salaries of employees. However, the deal did not materialize. For a firm that claimed to be on course for Rs 1,900 crore in gross revenues in FY23, the fall is certainly a surprise, however skeptical many in the market might have been about its numbers. It does seem to be a case of flying too high for a better valuation, only to be burnt by the reality of its operating market and poor processes for Reshamandi. For any startup chasing growth only for the next round of funding and higher valuation, this is a perennial existential risk, when a potential investor (Temasek in this case) decides to move back or wait it out. Even though some might say that the whole drive for the next round and valuations is frequently driven by investors themselves. Temasek has clearly seen something that convinced it to take a break even if that might mean curtains for ReshaMandi.

Exclusive: FamApp’s turnaround with profitability, new round and co-founder exit

EntrackrEntrackr · 1m ago
Exclusive: FamApp’s turnaround with profitability, new round and co-founder exit
Medial

Exclusive: FamApp’s turnaround with profitability, new round and co-founder exit Fintech startup FamApp (formerly FamPay) seems to have made a significant turnaround, as the company turned profitable and reached Rs 90–100 crore in revenue in the last fiscal year (FY25). Moreover, the six-year-old firm is in late-stage talks to raise secondary and primary capital from existing investors, according to three sources familiar with the matter. “Elevation Capital is leading a $15 million round, primarily comprising secondary capital, for FamApp,” said one of the sources on condition of anonymity. “The secondary component will facilitate an exit for co-founder Kush Taneja and potentially some seed-stage investors.” According to sources, ongoing differences between co-founders Taneja and Sambhav Jain over several months is a key reason for Taneja’s exit. FamApp last raised $38 million in its Series A round four years ago. So far, it has raised $42.7 million from investors like Elevation Capital, Y Combinator, Peak XV, and angels such as Kunal Shah and Amrish Rau. According to sources, Elevation and other investors will primarily acquire Taneja’s stake in the new round. The renewed investor confidence in FamApp comes after the company established stable and sizable revenue channels. “FamApp closed FY25 with Rs 90–100 crore in revenue and turned profitable, recording a profit before tax of Rs 10–12 crore,” said the second source, who wished to remain anonymous. While FamApp’s FY25 performance will be officially confirmed once it reports consolidated numbers, figures shared by sources indicate a major turnaround. In FY24, the company generated Rs 25 crore in revenue but reduced its losses by nearly 90%. FamApp earns revenue through premium upgrades like FamX Ultra (Rs 699), ATM withdrawals (Rs 29), video KYC (Rs 99), autosave feature (Rs 29), and nominal charges on loading of the teen wallet. Moreover, the platform sells premium skins that users can apply as stickers within the app. It also sells codes for gaming (like PUBG) and shopping, targeting the interests of its teen user base. During the first quarter of FY25, FamApp (by Trio) launched Namaspay, a UPI app for foreign travelers in India. It charges a Rs 1,650 one-time fee, 4% on loading, and 1% on withdrawals. According to sources, these revenue channels performed well for FamApp during the fiscal year ending March 2025. Queries sent to FamApp, Elevation, Sambhav Jain and Kush Taneja didn’t elicit any response. The sustained turnaround will be a welcome respite for investors for a concept they had high hopes from. Profitability also ensures the firm is better positioned to adapt to new changes in the fast evolving fintech space, especially the payments space. The exit of Co-Founder Taneja seems to have been handled well, with a cash exit for his labours over the years. Six years after starting with Jain, it is not odd for him to relook his own ambitions and interests vis-a-vis the direction the firm has taken. In fact, many would consider him lucky to be exiting on what appears to be friendly terms.

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