Jan sees lacklustre startup funding; Primebook bridges digital divide

Hello,

It’s a tale of two Q3 results.

Payments company Infibeam Avenues reported a 50% increase in annual profit, buoyed by strong revenue growth and cost management. Before tax, its payments arm made a profit of Rs 35.38 crore, while its ecommerce platform business earned Rs 29.37 crore.

Meanwhile, digital payments and lending platform MobiKwik’s net loss ballooned 15X to Rs 55.28 crore quarter-on-quarter, driven by volatile revenue trends, surging expenses, and one-off adjustments tied to agreements with lending partners.

In other news, AI continues to disrupt the Indian startup ecosystem.

Zomato chief Deepinder Goyal posted on X that he is looking to work with business leaders who treat AI as their ‘second brain’. This is the second time Goyal has reached out to X for applications after announcing an opening for the role of chief of staff last year.

SaaS major Zoho has also expanded its in-house AI platform, Zia, with agentic offerings that will enable enterprises to access, build, and deploy intelligent, autonomous digital agents across their organisations. 

Also, Krutrim, Ola’s AI venture, has launched an AI lab with LLMs Krutrim-2 and Krutrim 1, multilingual vision language model Chitrarth-1; speech LLM Dhwani-1, Krutrim Translate for text-to-text translation, and evaluation platform BharatBench.

The AI story has only just begun.

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• VC funding plateaus in January
• Primebook bridges digital divide
• Bond to Bachchan in art

Here’s your trivia for today: What is the most abundant mineral on Earth?

Funding

VC funding plateaus in January

The year 2025 has not begun on a very optimistic note for the Indian startup ecosystem as the monthly VC funding into startups in January saw a 1.5% year-on-year dip, largely due to the absence of momentum in the capital inflow. 

The total VC funding in January 2025 stood at $712 million compared with $723 million a year ago. However, the decline was 35% compared to December 2024 when the total funding stood at $1.1 billion.

Key takeaways:

• Investors remain cautious about opening their purses. This was evident in January when there was just a single deal with a value of above $100 million when Infra.Market raised $122 million.
• The first week of January saw just $14.4 million of VC inflow, one of the lowest over the last two years.
• There were very few large deals with India-headquartered companies but overseas-based companies did well, with Innovaccer raising $275 million and Netradyne raising $90 million.

Startup

Primebook bridges digital divide

Primebook was co-founded in 2018 by Aman Verma and Chitranshu Mahant, both IIT Delhi alumni. The push to start a company came after their volunteer work in Delhi’s slums. There, they saw firsthand how the lack of digital access was hindering students’ education. 

“We met students who had the zeal to learn but lacked the resources. It was eye-opening to see how the absence of a simple computing device could hold back so much potential,” Mahant, Co-founder and CEO of Primebook, tells YourStory.

Laptops for all:

• Primebook’s flagship laptop runs on PrimeOS, an Android-based operating system optimised for multitasking and compatible with over 200,000 educational apps. It offers two models: the Primebook Wi-Fi model, priced at Rs 12,990, and the Primebook 4G model, priced at Rs 14,990.
• Primebook has sold over 50,000 units to date and reported Rs 50 crore in revenue for FY24, with Rs 18 crore generated in the last quarter alone. 
• In 2023, Primebook ventured into the consumer market, pricing its laptops competitively to make them accessible to middle- and low-income families. It is also focusing on growing its digital presence through influencer partnerships and performance-driven marketing strategies. 

Art and Culture

Bond to Bachchan in art

While many actors, with their charm and stellar performances, have left an impression on the audience, there are a few icons who are universally loved and respected.  The two names that instantly strike are James Bond (a popular Hollywood character played by a number of actors, including Sean Connery and Daniel Craig) and Indian superstar, Amitabh Bachchan. 

Curated by independent critic-curator Georgina Maddox, the preview of Bond to Bachchan at Masha Art Gallery’s flagship space in the Taj Mahal Hotel presented an imagery of these icons beyond their tough exterior.

Cinema to art:

• Part of IAF Parallel (parallel events that run alongside the annual India Art Fair), the showcase at Taj Mahal Hotel brought together 21 artworks and 15 artists to project the enigma of Bond and Bachchan, who united the masses under one banner. 
• There was Agneepath by artist Shiffali Wadhawan which had multiple elements, each making a strong statement. Inspired by Bachchan’s brooding character, Vijay Dinanath Chauhan, the painting featured his caricature on a TV screen.
• Playing with imagination is an art, and Tapasya Gupta has mastered it with his sculpture Quantum Of Balance, which reimagines Bond as an ordinary human navigating the complexities of the mundane.

News & updates

• Partner: OpenAI unveiled a strategic collaboration with Kakao, the South Korean tech company that operates one of the region’s most popular messaging apps, KakaoTalk. The move comes one day after SoftBank allocated a budget of $3 billion to deploy OpenAI tech across its various group operations and subsidiaries, as well as establish a joint venture, SB OpenAI Japan.
• Tariffs: China imposed targeted tariffs on American imports and put several US companies, including Google, on notice for possible sanctions, in a measured response to the sweeping duties on Chinese imports imposed by President Donald Trump.
• Takeover: Grab Holdings is weighing a takeover of rival GoTo Group at a valuation of more than $7 billion, accelerating talks for a combination to end years of losses in Southeast Asia’s competitive internet market.

What is the most abundant mineral on Earth?

Answer: Bridgmanite. It’s a high-density form of magnesium-iron silicate that’s found deep within the Earth. 

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