Namaste, Sat Sri Akaal, and Salaam. 🫡

Happy morning folks. Today we’re diving into -
- Zepto’s stellar sales numbers,
- Cred’s push to get their hands in people’s retirement accounts,
- and SoftBank’s pipeline of portco IPOs.

Our read time today is 3 minutes and 37 seconds - faster than bechaini badhne lagi after Dhoni’s six-hitting masterclass yesterday. 🏏

Let's dive in. 👇

Market Vibe Check

Zepto races to a billion-dollar top line. 💸

TLDR -
- Zepto just hit $1bn/year of annualized revenue.
- Their newly opened dark stores break even in under 9 months and do 1500 orders/day.
- Quick commerce apps in India boast a retention rate of 60%+ with average spends of 5-7k INR.

The numbers are in, and Zepto is killing it in the quick-commerce market.

They’ve already hit the $1 billion/year mark in terms of annualized revenue, and are on track to be EBITDA profitable by the end of this year.

These are staggering numbers for a company that’s under 3 years old, especially given how aggressively they’ve scaled their micro-warehouse network across India.

Zepto’s average dark store turns profitable in under 9 months after hitting critical mass of around 1500 orders per day - a significant improvement from the 15-18 months that they used to be taking before.

India’s quick commerce market is a different beast, because people in Tier 1/metro cities are willing to shell out big bucks for convenience.

Younger folks spend anywhere from 2-10k INR per month on quick-commerce apps and have a retention rate of over 60%, which means that customers (while expensive to acquire) are incredibly sticky.

Keep in mind, this quick-commerce market was all but nonexistent just 3 years ago - and is today a $5bn/year industry.

Scale is a beautiful thing…

Cred pushes into wealth management with Kuvera acquisition. 🔥

TLDR -
- CRED is trying to buy out WealthTech platform Kuvera.
- Kuvera offers US stock investing, and they spent 10Rs to earn 1Rs last year.
- Kunal Shah cwants to turn CRED profitable by cross-selling different targeted financial products to his premium customer base.

Last year, CRED tried to buy out passive investing platform Smallcase.

However, (as with most things in life) there was a disagreement over the price tag, so the deal fell through.

CRED’s been itching for a chance to enter the wealth management game again, and they’re gonna do it by buying out Kuvera - a wealth-tech platform.

Kuvera is a startup that offers US stock investing, tax planning advice, and joint family investments.

It’s also previously raised money at a $100m+ valuation. 🙈

Last year, they had a top-line revenue of Rs 3.5 Cr, with losses of Rs 35 Cr. In other words, they spent ten bucks to earn one.

CRED knows that Kuvera won’t be able to sustain a loss-making business for too long, and is probably hoping to offer the founders/investors a quick exit.

They want to monetise their entire existing customer base (which is relatively premium!), and that solely depends on their ability to cross-sell more targeted financial products.

Killer stuff.

SoftBank gets ready for IPO action on their portfolio companies. 🚀

TLDR -
- A big chunk of SoftBank’s Indian portfolio is preparing to go public
- There are startups like Lenskart, Swiggy, FirstCry, and OfBusiness.
- Cumulative stakes are worth $42 billion and would be a BIG sigh of relief for SoftBank.

Lots of losses and billions of dollars later - SoftBank is finally seeing the fruits of it’s India investments.

Tons of their big-name India companies are in the early stages of going public.

A few of these companies are -
- Lenskart, at $5 billionish last
- Swiggy, at $5.5 billion last
- FirstCry, at $3.1 billionish last
- OfBusiness, at $5 billion last.

One very un-Softbanklike stat is that 93% of their 473 portcos have positive monthly cash flow.

Lots of excitement to come in the markets…

In other news… ☕

Dollar enjoys it’s strongest week since 2022 (FT)

CVC hunts a $16bn valuation for their IPO (BBG)

Naval Ravikant launches a new chat for voice-only conversations (TC)

Vedanta picks up $500mn for their energy business (Mint)

Bank of England changes the way they forecast inflation after surprises (NYT)

And that’s the tea the chai for today.

Thanks for reading, and we hope you enjoyed it.

Lots of ❤️,

Team CC