Life after CaratLane for Mithun Sacheti; LendingKart clocks Rs 30 Cr in Q1FY24

Hello,

Fintechs in the spotlight.

To start with, a report by Elevation Capital and McKinsey & Co highlighted that India's fintech ecosystem is expected to reach an annual revenue scale of $70 billion by FY30, with a value creation worth $400 billion, a 4X growth from current levels. 

Then, US-based AMC Fidelity Investments has marked up the fair value of its investment in Pine Labs by 4.6% month-on-month at $34.77 million as of July 31, 2023. Earlier, it had marked down the company's valuation to about $4.5 billion.

Meanwhile, Razorpay and Truecaller have partnered to provide a fast and secure online checkout experience for shoppers with its one-tap, OTP-less verification solution.

Elsewhere, at Amazon Smbhav 2023, the ecommerce major and India Post announced a partnership for an integrated cross-border logistics solution to extend the scope of ecommerce exports from Indian MSMEs. Amazon also plans to collaborate with the Indian Railways’ Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India (DFC) to utilise its freight railway routes for shipping customer parcels.

ICYMI: We have a new kind of oxygen now, thanks to a group of scientists headed by Yosuke Kondo at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan. While Oxygen-28 was long predicted to be unusually stable, initial observations suggest that this isn’t the case: it disintegrates rapidly after creation. 

And guess what? This may just change how we perceive the atomic nuclei.

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• Life after CaratLane for Mithun Sacheti
• LendingKart clocks Rs 30 Cr in Q1FY24
• Dry fruit brand Bolas bets on offline channel

Here’s your trivia for today: How many squares are there on a chessboard?

Interview

Life after CaratLane for Mithun Sacheti

Mithun Sacheti came from a family of jewellers. His father, Padam Sacheti, set up Jaipur Gems in the 70s in Mumbai. While he could have easily walked in his father’s footsteps, he took the learnings, the tricks of the trade his father taught him, and put them into practice by creating Caratlane. 

Titan—which first invested in CaratLane in 2016—has now signed a deal to buy out Sacheti’s 27.18% stake for Rs 4,621 crore—making it one of the largest exits for a founder in the past five years, second to Sachin and Binny Bansal’s exit from Flipkart post the Walmart-Flipkart deal. 

Gold moment:

• Sacheti considers the first four years (2008-2011) to be the most challenging. He not only had to get new customers but also ensure they became repeat customers. His family business taught him the importance of loyalty. 
• In FY23, CaratLane clocked Rs 2,177 crore in revenue, a 72% increase over the previous year. 
• “Money is just a score in life. Deployment is a bigger challenge for me, Sacheti says, talking about his ambitions of becoming an enabler, a mentor to other founders. “I look forward to working with partners who are interested in learning from my skill sets of compounding.” 

Fintech

LendingKart clocks Rs 30 Cr in Q1FY24

Fullerton-backed Lendingkart Group has clocked a 99% jump in its net profit to Rs 30 crore for the June 2023 quarter as compared to the same quarter last year. The overall revenue jumped 43% to Rs 268 crore in the said period. Currently, the company claims to have two lakh customers across India.

Sweet money:

• The Ahmedabad-based MSME-focused digital lender disbursed loans worth Rs 1,213 crore, a 49% y-o-y increase. 
• Of this, Rs 963 crore was disbursed via co-lending partnership with over 20 banks and NBFCs while the rest was facilitated by Lendingkart’s in-house NBFC. 
• The company closed its FY23 at Rs 120 crore profit against a net loss of about Rs 203 crore in the fiscal year before while the revenue grew 34% to Rs 828 crore. 

MSME

Dry fruit brand Bolas bets on offline channel

India is the second-largest cashew-producing country in the world, with Kerala and Maharashtra leading the production. Capitalising on the opportunity, Bola Raghavendra Kamath established his own small cashew processing unit in 1958. 

What started as a small enterprise bagged its first export order from the US within two years of inception. 

The retail route:

• Today, Bolas Agro Pvt Ltd is a Rs 1,600 crore turnover company, specialising in the import and export of dry fruits. It recently ventured into the retail space, opening 70+ stores in three years.
• With the expansion of its business model from B2B to B2C through offline and online channels, Bolas is one of the largest suppliers of dry fruits to retail chains like D'Mart and Reliance.
• By the end of this fiscal year, Kamath envisions the inauguration of over 100 stores in various regions of India, strengthening Bolas' retail presence.

News & updates

• AI in dating: How will AI change the nature of relationships? Whatever happens, people will probably still seek the company of others. And technology might be able to help. For one, AI could make singles better at courtship, according to Whitney Wolfe Herd of Bumble.
• Fastest growth: India’s economy grew at its quickest pace in a year in the April-June quarter, buoyed by strong services activity and robust demand, but a drier-than-normal monsoon season could restrain future growth. GDP expanded 7.8% on an annual basis in the quarter.
• Unbundling: Microsoft is going to unbundle its chat and video app Teams from its Office product and make it easier for competing products to work with its software, but rivals said it may need to do more to stave off a possible EU antitrust fine.

How many squares are there on a chessboard?

Answer: 64 squares in an 8×8 grid.

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