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Exclusive: Garuda Aerospace converts into public company

EntrackrEntrackr · 8d ago
Exclusive: Garuda Aerospace converts into public company
Medial

Exclusive: Garuda Aerospace converts into public company Drone technology startup Garuda Aerospace is set to convert into a public company after passing a resolution approving the move, a step that signals its preparation for a potential public listing. According to its filing with the Registrar of Companies (RoC), Garuda Aerospace’s board has passed a resolution to rename the entity as Garuda Aerospace Limited by removing the word “Private”. In line with regulatory requirements, the company has appointed Asha Vijayaraghavan, Mandakulathur Ramachandran Venkatesh, and Rithika Mohan as independent directors, while Vishnu Jayaprakash has been appointed as an additional director and Rithika Mohan has also been designated as a whole-time director. Founded in 2015, Garuda Aerospace is a drone-as-a-service startup that designs, manufactures, and customizes UAVs for uses such as deliveries, disaster management, and agriculture. The company operates India’s largest drone fleet with 400 drones and 500 pilots across 84 cities, offering 30 drone models and 50 related services. According to startup data intelligence platform TheKredible, Garuda Aerospace has raised approximately $44 million to date from investors such as Nagarajan Seyyadurai, Ocgrow Ventures, cricketer MS Dhoni and others. The company recently raised funding from the Narotam Sekhsaria Family Office to scale its manufacturing capacity from 8,000 drones a year to 12,000–15,000 units, and it plans to expand its export presence to 50 countries by year-end. For the fiscal year ended March 2025, the MS Dhoni-backed firm posted profit of Rs 17.5 crore while operating revenue grew 7.3% to Rs 118 crore from Rs 110 crore in FY24. Earlier this year, Garuda's CEO indicated the IPO would not occur in 2025 but the company is in the planning phase to expand manufacturing, research, and development.

Yaantra co-founder Jayant Jha launches BytePe, a smartphone subscription platform

EntrackrEntrackr · 2m ago
Yaantra co-founder Jayant Jha launches BytePe, a smartphone subscription platform
Medial

Yaantra co-founder Jayant Jha launches BytePe, a smartphone subscription platform BytePe, a tech subscription platform, has launched to offer consumers an easier way to get the latest smartphones. Founded by Jayant Jha, former Flipkart leader and co-founder of Yaantra, BytePe aims to make premium technology more affordable and flexible for Indian consumers. For years, Indians have followed the traditional ownership model by saving money, taking EMIs, and keeping old devices. BytePe changes this by offering a subscription service where users pay monthly fees lower than EMIs, upgrade to new models each year, and use the service without extra costs or lock-ins. At launch, consumers can access the newly released iPhone 17 Series, including iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Air, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max, through BytePe’s subscription plans. Subscribers receive one-time damage protection, upgrade options at the end of the tenure, and assured buyback benefits. For customers preferring upfront purchases, BytePe offers 50% assured buyback at the end of 12 or 24 months, along with comprehensive protection. Under its “Pay for what you use” model, BytePe claims users can save up to 50% compared to EMIs, with no upfront costs or hidden charges. The platform also plans to introduce options that include insurance, buyback, and flexible upgrades under one plan.

Seven-year-old unicorn Open struggles to match deeds to reputation

EntrackrEntrackr · 1y ago
Seven-year-old unicorn Open struggles to match deeds to reputation
Medial

Neo-banking platform Open turned unicorn after a $50 million funding led by IIFL along with the participation of Tiger Global in May 2023. Despite the eminent status and significant funding, the scale and bottom line of the seven-year-old firm remained questionable as its enterprise value to revenue multiple stood at 260X until March 2023 (FY23). Open’s revenue from operations saw a modest 25% growth to Rs 30 crore in FY23 from Rs 24 crore in FY22, its consolidated financial statements filed with the Registrar of Companies (RoC) show. For context, Open recorded Rs 40 crore in revenue during FY22. The difference in revenue numbers for FY22 can be attributed to the change in accounting standards and revenue booking methods. Founded in 2017, Open offers banking, payments, and accounting solutions to small and medium businesses. Subscription sales through the company’s software and commission earned from customer transactions were the two main revenue streams for the company. It also made Rs 23 crore from interest on deposits and current investments (non-operating) taking total revenue to Rs 53 crore in FY23. For the neo-bank startup, its employee benefits constituted 50% of the overall expenditure. This cost grew 33% to Rs 149 crore in FY22 from Rs 112 crore in FY22 which also includes Rs 40 crore as ESOP cost (non-cash). The firm’s information technology, advertising, legal, payment gateway, card issuing, and other overheads catalyzed its overall expenditure to Rs 296 crore in FY23 from Rs 217 crore in FY22. See TheKredible for the complete expense breakup. Caveat: We have excluded the cost of change in fair value of compulsorily convertible cumulative participating preference shares for FY22 due to its non-cash nature. The modest scale and increased expenditure led Open’s losses to increase by 37.5% to Rs 242 crore in FY23 as compared to Rs 176 crore in FY22. Its ROCE and EBITDA margin stood at -50% and -394% respectively. FY22-FY23 FY22 FY23 EBITDA Margin -568% -394.3% Expense/₹ of Op Revenue ₹9.04 ₹9.87 ROCE -41% -50% Open’s total current assets stood at 332 crore including the cash and bank balance of Rs 311 crore till March 2023. On a unit level, it spent Rs 9.87 to earn a rupee in FY23. Open has raised over $180 million to date. According to the startup data intelligence platform TheKredible, Beenext is the largest external stakeholder at the moment with 11.72% followed by Tiger Global and Unicorn India Ventures. If readers wonder just what investors saw to pump in the funds into the firm to lift it to Unicorn valuations, then they are not alone, as even we struggle to understand the narrative that sold so well. The challenge of commercial success targeting India’s MSME sector has been well documented, thanks to the failure of multiple startups that were richly valued, only to fall by the wayside. At this stage, it’s safe to say that other than lending, practically nothing has worked, beyond the listing model of Indiamart and the likes. Considering Open raised its last funding as recently as 2023, well after it was established that the MSME sector is a graveyard for fee based efforts to ‘help’ them, one really has to wonder what Open offered to manage such amazing investor buy-in. Either way, we should know soon enough, as the clock ticks away for the firm to shake out its secret sauce.

Sedna HoReCa raises Rs 50 Cr led by Anicut Capital

EntrackrEntrackr · 7m ago
Sedna HoReCa raises Rs 50 Cr led by Anicut Capital
Medial

Sedna HoReCa, a business-to-business (B2B) platform for the hotel, restaurant, and catering (HoReCa) industry, has raised Rs 50 crore ($5.8 million) in a new funding round led by Anicut Capital. The Hyderabad-based company had previously raised $1.44 million. The proceeds will be utilized to build “India’s first integrated, technology-driven B2B solutions platform” for the HoReCa ecosystem and expand across 20 cities in the next 12 months, Sedna said in a press release. Co-founded in July 2022 by Mahadevan Narayanamoni and Saurabh Pandey, Sedna unifies software, distribution, and food product solutions under one roof. Its offering is structured around three verticals: B2B SaaS, commerce and distribution, and ready-to-cook or ready-to-serve food products. According to Sedna, its SaaS vertical includes SupplyNote, a widely used inventory management software, and BillNote, a point-of-sale (POS) software for restaurants and cafés. The commerce and distribution vertical includes Vyap, a supply distribution platform, and SupplyLink, a third- and fourth-party logistics (3PL/4PL) solution tailored for HoReCa businesses. These offerings aim to solve operational pain points such as high procurement costs, erratic supply chains, and inventory losses. Sedna intends to foray into the food segment with ready-to-cook and ready-to-serve offerings aimed at HoReCa businesses, food courts, direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands, and commercial kitchens. It is setting up a new food production facility in Bengaluru and will scale HU’s existing facility. Sedna aims to eliminate the hassles the HoReCa industry has been facing, such as escalating purchase costs, erratic fill rates, long lead times, and inventory loss due to pilferage.

Dhruv Dhanraj Bahl’s VC fund Eternal Capital rebrands to ‘Sadev Ventures’

EntrackrEntrackr · 3m ago
Dhruv Dhanraj Bahl’s VC fund Eternal Capital rebrands to ‘Sadev Ventures’
Medial

Eternal Capital, the early-stage venture capital fund founded by former BharatPe COO Dhruv Dhanraj Bahl, has announced its rebranding to Sadev Ventures. According to the company, the rebranding to Sadev Ventures aligns the fund’s identity with its family office name that has long represented its core values. The fund will now operate with this new identity and plans to double down on its India-first strategy, enabling many of its portfolio companies to expand overseas by leveraging global LPs and strategic partners. “As our vision goes deeper into India’s entrepreneurial fabric while simultaneously tapping financial, social & intellectual capital pools across borders, it’s the right time to scale under an identity that has resonated with all our longstanding stakeholders. It also shifts the focus away from a ‘capital-only’ play and reinforces our commitment to enabling ventures that can become generational institutions,” said Dhruv Dhanraj Bahl, founder & managing partner of the fund. Launched in mid-2024, Sadev Ventures is sector-agnostic and stage-focused, backing startups between seed and pre-series A with cheque sizes of Rs 2-6 crore. The fund has deployed about half of the corpus, with investments in 20 startups. Some of its portfolio ventures include Asaya, Cleevo, Cookd, Gladful, Hypergro, Bidso, and Liquide, with a corpus of Rs 120 crore and a greenshoe option of an additional Rs 120 crore. As per Sadev Ventures, the fund will continue to invest in post-product-market-fit startups, with an eye on profitable revenue trajectories and long-term potential. It will also maintain its operator-led structure, offering what it calls the “colour of money”—blending financial capital with deep founder empathy, and access to high-impact networks.

Zomato becomes first Indian startup to enter Sensex 30

EntrackrEntrackr · 11m ago
Zomato becomes first Indian startup to enter Sensex 30
Medial

Foodtech giant Zomato has made history as the first Indian startup to join the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) Sensex 30, replacing JSW Steel Limited in the benchmark index of India’s top 30 companies. Zomato's inclusion in the SENSEX follows its strong performance over the past year. The stock has gained 38% in the past six months, 124.79% year-to-date, and 114.29% over the last year. On Monday, following its inclusion in the Sensex 30, Zomato's stock declined by 3.15% (as of 12:28 PM) to Rs 278.70 on the Bombay Stock Exchange, with a total market capitalization of Rs 2.68 lakh crore (approximately $31.9 billion) During the second quarter of the ongoing fiscal year, Zomato achieved a remarkable 68.5% quarter-on-quarter growth in operating revenue, reaching Rs 4,799 crore from Rs 2,848 crore in Q2 FY24. The Gurugram-based company also recorded a 4.8X increase in net profit to Rs 176 crore in the quarter ending September. Its arch-rival Swiggy posted Rs 3,601 crore of revenue and a net loss of Rs 625 crore during the second quarter of the current fiscal year. The recently listed firm is currently traded at Rs 592.8 per share and has a total market capitalization of Rs 1,32,695 crore (around $15.8 billion). Zomato also secured $1 billion from qualified institutional investors (QIIs) last month. The money keeps the firm with enough powder for future investments, even as the stock will benefit from index investing now, even though the BSE Sensex remains a smaller representation of India’s investment opportunities than say, the 50 share NSE Nifty. For Zomato, the index inclusion is a massive vindication of its seemingly high risk approach, where it has simply refused to rest on laurels, always pushing the boundaries to seek a competitive edge. Be it the acquisition of Blinkit, edgy communication strategies, or the investments into other startups, the firm has done enough to justify the lofty valuations, and expectations from investors thus far. The recent fundraise has also underscored its readiness to invest and invest big where it sees a need to do so. The sensex inclusion has seemed like a logical move for the pioneering tech firm, and the big question on everyone’s minds will surely be- what next?

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