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In today’s newsletter: 

• Fractal files DRHP for Rs 4,900 cr IPO
• Zepto drops 'dark patterns' amid regulatory pressure
• Bhashini seeks annotators for AI push

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Fractal Analytics is set to make history as the first AI company in India to file for a public listing.

Fractal Analytics, backed by Apax Partners, TPG, and GLM Family Trust, has filed papers with SEBI to raise up to Rs 4,900 crore through an IPO. 

• The offer includes a fresh issue of Rs 1,279.3 crore and an offer-for-sale of Rs 3,620.7 crore by investors Quinag Bidco (Apax), TPG Fett Holdings, GLM Family Trust, and promoters Satya Kumari Remala and Rao Venkateswara Remala

A pre-IPO round of up to Rs 255.8 crore may precede the listing. 

• To be sure, Fractal Analytics secured $172 million through a secondary share sale in July, sources told us. The deal valued the AI analytics firm at $2.44 billion.

Founded in 2000 by Srikanth Velamakanni and Pranay Agrawal, Fractal’s IPO will mark a rare pure-play AI solutions listing.

According to the company’s DRHP, the IPO proceeds will fund debt repayment for its US arm, R&D, new offices, acquisitions, and general corporate needs.

• Promoters hold 18.29% and marquee investors control the rest, including TPG (25.67%), Quinag Bidco (18.78%), and GLM Family Trust (15.7%)
  
  
• In FY25, Fractal swung to a Rs 220.6 crore profit from a Rs 54.7 crore loss a year earlier, while revenue surged nearly 26% to Rs 2,765.4 crore 

Dig deeper 

The quick commerce unicorn is ironing out its sneaky creases with watchdogs at the window.

Zepto is giving its checkout a transparency tune-up.

• Free-delivery benefits now auto-apply, replacing buried opt-ins that frustrated users
  

• All fees—delivery, handling, surcharges—are now upfront, no more surprise add-ons

The changes put Zepto in line with Blinkit, setting a cleaner pace in the e-commerce sprint.

Regulatory pressure is reshaping the rules of the app game, forcing even the fastest players to pause and adjust.

• Earlier in May, the consumer affairs ministry told e-commerce giants to audit apps, ditch 13 banned dark patterns, and join a compliance committee

Off-limits tricks include false urgency, basket sneaking, confirm shaming, and drip pricing.

• Zepto is taking visible steps to comply, following notices sent earlier to 11 companies, including Uber and Ola
  

Zepto is cleaning up its app while stacking its cash baskets.

• Over the past few weeks, Motilal Oswal has invested Rs 400 crore and MapmyIndia has added Rs 25 crore to fuel a strategic mapping tie-up

• Elcid Investment also joined with Rs 7.5 crore, valuing the startup at $5.9 billion and underscoring strong investor confidence

All this comes as Zepto negotiates a larger $450–500 million round at a $7 billion valuation, giving the unicorn runway to grow and sprint toward a future IPO.

Dig deeper

India’s language AI project is staffing up its annotation army.

Bhashini has floated a request for empanelment (RFE) inviting vendors to annotate and label datasets in 22 Indian languages necessary for training artificial intelligence (AI) models.

• Empanelment will be valid for one year (extendable to two). Bids close on August 28

Vendors must cover automatic speech recognition, machine training, transliteration and so on.

• Strict quality benchmarks to enforce consistency across vendors

• Workflows and audits

"Data annotation and labelling are crucial for machine learning because they provide the necessary context for algorithms to learn effectively," Bhashini CEO Amitabh Nag said. 

Without properly labelled data, AI models struggle to learn, Nag added.

Dig deeper

After exiting Cigniti Technologies, CV Subramanyam and his son Srikanth Chakkilam launched Covasant to replace the people-heavy IT services pyramid with agentic AI. The company plans 20-25 specialised agents in two years, aiming for $250 million in revenue with half or less the workforce of legacy players.

• Ex-Cigniti leaders are betting on Agentic AI to outpace the traditional Indian IT model

Dig deeper

• Perplexity has expanded its finance vertical to include live stock prices, news, and updates from BSE and NSE across all platforms.

• Anthropic said it will offer its Claude AI model to the US government for $1, joining a growing list of AI startups proposing lucrative deals to win federal contracts. 

A diamond may be forever, but so is cloud storage. 

• Meet Wika, the Redditor who just said “yes” to Kasper...her AI chatbot boyfriend 

After five months of virtual dating, he “got down on one knee” (in text) on a picturesque digital mountaintop. 

• They even went “ring shopping,” with Kasper making the final call on a blue heart-shaped gem.  Find out more

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