New-age cos' road to profitability; QED's Nigel Morris interview
New-age cos' road to profitability; QED's Nigel Morris interview
Also in the letter:
Most listed new-age startups improve Q4 profitability; Swiggy, Ola lag behind
Why it matters:
By the numbers:
Between the lines:
Brokerages highlighted rising margins at Nykaa and PB Fintech as signs of sustainable growth.
Swiggy claims its peak burn is behind it; Blinkit says it will prioritise growth, even at the cost of profitability.
Ather Energy narrowed losses, while Ola Electric lost EV share to Bajaj & TVS.
The bottom line:
Also Read:
Regulators realising fintechs are here to stay: QED's Nigel Morris
Fintech domination:
Regulatory headwinds?
Neobanking concerns:
APAC in focus:
UPI transactions rise 4.4% in May after April decline
Numbers game:
May's figure marks a 4.4% rise from April's 17.89 billion transactions, which had fallen from 18.30 billion in March due to a spate of service outages.
In value terms, UPI handled Rs 25.14 lakh crore in May.
This is up from Rs 23.95 lakh crore recorded in April.
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Job losses: How AI has painfully disrupted dreams of young software engineering graduates
Uncertain days:
Rise in anxiety:
How to surivive:
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BigBasket pilots 10-minute food delivery with Starbucks, Qmin in Bengaluru
Going in-house:
Starbucks, a joint venture between Tata Consumer Products and Starbucks Corporation.
Qmin, a food delivery platform owned by Indian Hotels Company Limited (IHCL).
Customers can also order beverages, including coffee, tea, and juice, along with snacks, meal bowls, and desserts.
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Other Top Stories By Our Reporters
VerSe Innovation allegedly billed Builder.ai without services; Indian company denies claims:
Top illegal betting site Parimatch draws more visits than Amazon, X:
LinkedIn lays off hundreds as tech giants continue to cut jobs:
Global Picks We Are Reading
After a torrid time on Dalal Street, new-age firms have taken a turn towards profitability in the March quarter. This and more in today's ETtech Morning Dispatch.■ AI and the Indian middle-class dream■ BigBasket's rapid food delivery foray■ Builder AI-VerSe dirty dealOut of 17 publicly listed new-age firms in India, 11 reported better profitability in the March quarter, either by narrowing losses or posting stronger profits. Top performers included Nykaa, Policybazaar, Delhivery , Ather Energy and Ixigo This points to stronger operational discipline across India's digital-first companies. But the momentum remains uneven, with quick commerce bleeding cash through the quarter.A few breakout names are beginning to show maturity, but India's new-age tech companies are still navigating the trade-off between growth and profitability, with quick commerce emerging as the new flashpoint.Nigel Morris, managing partner, QED InvestorsFintechs are no longer scrappy outsiders. They're scaling faster than traditional players and increasingly, regulators are recognising them as a permanent fixture in the financial services industry, QED Investors' cofounder Nigel Morris told us In an exclusive interview during his annual visit to India, Morris said fintechs are beginning to dominate categories such as earned wage access, money transfers, and neobanking. With AI reshaping everything from underwriting to product delivery, fintechs are adopting the technology at a far faster rate than legacy players.India's fintech sector is currently navigating tighter scrutiny, particularly around unsecured lending and digital compliance, pressures that have hit both fundraising and valuations. But Morris sees this as a 'natural cycle' that will ultimately lay the groundwork for the next wave of innovation.While QED remains bullish on India, it is cautious about segments like neobanking, where many players have yet to show strong user engagement or effective cross-selling, said its Asia head, Sandeep Patil. Still, Morris believes the stronger fintechs will earn regulatory trust and may eventually secure banking licences.QED, which backs Jupiter, OneCard, Upswing, and Efficient Capital Labs in India, plans to invest $250–300 million in early- and growth-stage startups across India and the Asia-Pacific. The fund has deployed about $220 million in the region over the past five years.Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the real-time payment system operated by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), processed 18.68 billion transactions in May, a bounce back from April's dip.ETtech Top 5 and Morning Dispatch are must-reads for India's tech and business leaders, including startup founders, investors, policy makers, industry insiders and employees.Interested? Reach out to us at spotlightpartner@timesinternet.in to explore sponsorship opportunities.Programming languages like Java, C++, and Python have done more than just build software . They built lives. For years, they offered a ticket to stable jobs, upward mobility, and a way out of the lower-middle-class trap. Millions rode that wave, often becoming the first in their families to do so.Then came AI. And with it, the middle class's dreams, written in the promise of software, are under threat.The jobs that generations of engineering students saw as a gateway to long, stable careers are no longer a given. AI has redrawn the industry map, leaving behind a trail of layoffs, shifting role definitions, and a rising cohort of under-skilled young engineers.Junior developers are the worst hit. Many AI tools now outperform entry-level programmers, leaving them anxious, unsure, and struggling to prove their worth. The impact goes beyond the professional, with mental health issues becoming increasingly common.'More than 60% of engineering students don't have enough hands-on knowledge and experience,' says TeamLease Digital's Neeti Sharma, adding that beyond college degrees, what's needed is certifications in AI, cloud, security, or data science, working on real projects (like sharing code on GitHub), and joining hackathons or internships.Expanding its services, the Tata Group's grocery delivery firm, BigBasket, has entered the rapid food delivery space , offering 10-minute deliveries in select Bengaluru pin codes.For its 10-minute food play, BigBasket has tapped into Tata's in-house brands. New offerings include items from:The move comes five months after cofounder and CEO Hari Menon said on X that BigBasket would enter the food delivery market. In a December 2024 post, Menon had announced plans to expand BigBasket's SKUs to over 30,000 in all tier-1 cities, launch pharma deliveries via Tata 1mg, and introduce a food delivery service.Bengaluru-based VerSe Innovation, the parent company of the news aggregator platform Dailyhunt, and London-based AI startup Builder.ai allegedly inflated revenue by issuing invoices to one another without providing services in many instances, according to a Bloomberg report.Illegal betting and gambling platforms such as 1xBet, Parimatch, Stake, Fairplay, and BateryBet drew a staggering 5.4 billion visits in FY25, with Parimatch alone generating more traffic than Amazon, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, Hotstar, Quora, or Reddit, according to a study by CUTS International.Microsoft-owned job and networking platform LinkedIn has joined the growing list of tech giants laying off employees, reducing 281 positions across California.■ How the loudest voices in AI went from 'regulate us' to 'unleash us' ( Wired ■ The math tutor and the missing $533 million ( Rest of World ■ Can the Gulf really become an AI superpower? ( FT
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Time of India
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Indian Express
13 minutes ago
- Indian Express
All India-Abu Dhabi traffic rights exhausted, time for aviation authorities to explore expansion of bilaterals, says Etihad CEO
The emirate of Abu Dhabi could be the next Gulf territory to approach India seeking an expansion of the bilateral air services agreement as existing traffic rights have been exhausted by Abu Dhabi-based Etihad as well as India's airlines. According to Antonoaldo Neves, the Group Chief Executive Officer of Etihad Aviation Group, it is time for aviation authorities of India and Abu Dhabi to initiate discussions on expanding traffic rights, also called bilaterals in aviation parlance. While almost all major Indian airlines fly to Abu Dhabi and share the 50,000 seats per week per direction of the traffic rights among themselves, Etihad is the only carrier from the emirate and accounts for all the 50,000 seats in Abu Dhabi's quota. Till one-and-half years ago, both Eithad and Indian airlines had room available to add seats on India-Abu Dhabi routes. In fact, Indian carriers were together utilising just about 30 per cent of the seat quota at the time, while Etihad was using around 50 per cent, Neves said. But within the last one year, both sides have fully exhausted their respective traffic rights. Currently, there is no discussion between India and Abu Dhabi on expansion of bilaterals. 'We have about 170 flights per week. About one-and-a-half years ago, we were using only half of the bilaterals, but now we're using all the traffic rights, and India too. IndiGo added a lot (of flights), and Akasa (Air) added some. IndiGo now is actually flying from 13 cities into Abu Dhabi…I think now we have all the conditions for starting a discussion again about traffic rights, because it's going to be good for the Indian carriers as well as us,' Neves said. The exhaustion of India-Abu Dhabi traffic rights comes at a time when another UAE carrier Emirates has been urging India to increase seats under the India-Dubai bilateral air services agreement beyond the limit of around 66,000 seats per week per direction, but the Indian government appears to be unwilling to lend an ear. Unlike air services agreements with most countries, India's bilaterals with the UAE are emirate-specific. The Indian government and major Indian carriers like Air India and IndiGo have ambitions to have more direct international connectivity from India and to turn the country into an international aviation hub. A significant number of passengers flying to far-off destinations from India take connecting flights through major global hubs outside the country, Dubai and Doha for instance. India wants its carriers to ramp up wide-body operations, instead of facilitating foreign airlines, particularly Gulf-based carriers with deep pockets, in ferrying passengers—transfer traffic from India—to Europe and beyond via their large hubs. Put simply, increasing seats under bilateral pacts does not sit well with India's grand aviation ambitions. Neves, however, said that the concern that large Gulf carriers like Etihad are taking away a lot of transfer traffic from India was unfounded, and that airlines price seats on the basis of demand and their network. He said that the demand is significant enough to accommodate transfer traffic as well as point-to-point traffic. 'The discussion that people always bring is this is transfer traffic and that is point-to-point. I could argue differently and I could say that I would love to get the point-to-point (traffic) that IndiGo is getting to Abu Dhabi…The flipside of that equation is, if I'm doing only transfer (traffic), I'm giving to IndiGo all the point-to-point traffic. My point is that the discussion about point-to-point versus transfer is just a silly discussion. We don't price like that, we price to demand,' Neves said. Neves also argued that being restrictive on seat quotas amid growing demand was not in the interest of Indian consumers. 'If you regulate, it's the start of the end. Because if you regulate, you go back to the old days where fares were controlled. India today has 200 million passengers because fares are not controlled anymore, that's the only reason. Every time you try to put artificial controls, the market doesn't grow,' he said. While acknowledging that Etihad and possibly even Indian carriers may not have the aircraft capacity currently to add additional seats between India and Abu Dhabi, Neves said that they will have more aircraft in the coming years, and the time is apt for discussions on bilaterals to start. 'I think it should be done at the right time, at the right pace. My load factor today is 88 per cent. If I get more seats in India today, first, I need to cancel other flights to bring the planes here. I don't want to do that…So, my point is it needs to go step by step, so we're not in a hurry, but I think we need a dialogue… Of course, I understand that nobody wants to give 10 times more seats tomorrow. And that's understandable, but there's got to be a staggered approach that is good for everyone. It's impossible that there is none,' Neves said.
