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One quick thing: General Atlantic pumps $600 mn into PhonePe ahead of IPO   

In today’s newsletter: 

• Groww’s Lalit Keshre picks time in market over IPO timing
• Swiggy posts Rs 1,092 cr loss, to raise Rs 10,000 crore via QIP
• Microsoft bets big on India’s developer boom

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Even as brokerages struggle with shrinking investor activity, Groww is taking a different stance.

• Its message to the Street mirrors what it tells its own customers: stay invested for the long haul

2025 hasn’t been kind to Indian brokers. Active investors are down, revenues are under pressure and profits have thinned. Against this backdrop, Groww has picked November 4–7 as the dates for its much-anticipated IPO.

In an interview with us, co-founder and CEO Lalit Keshre insists that listing won’t force short-termism.

“We will always think long-term, and about the customers. I don’t think we are going to change this belief,” Keshre said.

Groww is unfazed by growth potential or the total addressable market. Instead, it places its bets on the country’s growth and the rise of wealth.

"Trillions of dollars of wealth in India is in traditional assets. And as countries develop, that also moves to financial assets," Keshre said.

Groww is expanding aggressively into wealth management, recently acquiring Fisdom. The platform now offers over 14 products, from commodities to margin trading facilities, with more in the pipeline.

"For all the products—whatever exists in the wealth. Like, you have to build wealth, you want to invest in that, it will be on Groww," he said.

For Keshre, going public is not about chasing market sentiment.

“Time in the market matters more than timing the market,” he said.

For Keshre and his co-founders, listing marks accountability and opportunity: customers can now also become shareholders.

"Our bosses are the customers. But now, I think, from the shareholder perspective, they become our boss, we build for them," he added.

Read the full interview. Prefer video? Watch it here

Swiggy is delivering….just not profits. As rivals race ahead, it’s stocking up on capital before the checkout queue gets longer.

The food may be hot, but the numbers are cold.

• Swiggy’s net loss widened 74% YoY to Rs 1,092 crore in Q2FY26, even as revenue jumped 54% to Rs 5,561 crore

• Food delivery stayed steady, clocking 19% GOV growth, while Instamart’s revenue more than doubled YoY to Rs 1,038 crore

CEO Sriharsha Majety blamed “volatile consumption trends” and competitive discounting — but insisted the core business remains on track for recovery.

When competition heats up, you order more capital — not coffee.

• Swiggy will consider raising up to Rs 10,000 crore via QIP on November 7 to strengthen its balance sheet and fund Instamart’s growth

The timing’s no accident — rivals Blinkit and Zepto are expanding fast, with Eternal already having raised Rs 8,500 crore last year.

• The planned fundraise will help Swiggy defend its market share, invest in quick commerce, and stay nimble in India’s hottest internet battleground

While Swiggy counted losses, Zepto counted orders.

• CEO Aadit Palicha told us Zepto delivered over 20 lakh orders per day during Diwali week — 40% higher than its closest rival

Blinkit still leads at 30 lakh daily orders, but Zepto’s gap-closing run comes weeks after its $450 million fundraise.

• Palicha insists Zepto’s not just growing faster but burning less per order, calling rival comparisons “inaccurate” — the quick commerce war, clearly, is far from over

Dig deeper

India’s developer community is expanding rapidly, and Microsoft wants in.

The country's growing army of tech builders offers “huge potential” and remains a key area of investment, top Microsoft executive Jay Parikh told us in an interview. 

• Parikh currently oversees Core AI, an engineering division developing the end-to-end Copilot and AI stack that enables the firm’s first-party and third-party customers to build and run AI applications and agents

Microsoft-owned developer platform GitHub is investing significant efforts in community building and learning initiatives, he said.

India now has the world’s largest open-source contributor base, surpassing the United States, according to GitHub.

• India is also GitHub’s fastest-growing and second-largest developer community, with 21.9 million developers. It’s projected to be the largest by 2030, with more than 57.5 million

The company wants to tap into this momentum to achieve its ambitious goal of reaching one billion developers globally by 2030.

GitHub is pursuing a broad strategy to further drive adoption of its developer platform in India, COO Kyle Daigle told us. 

• This includes engaging with students, universities, startups, and enterprises with a range of tailored initiatives 

Go deeper

Also Read: GitHub COO Kyle Daigle on 'vibe coding' and why one should still learn to code in the AI era

• OpenAI is reportedly preparing for a potential IPO as early as the second half of 2026 that could value it at up to $1 trillion, with preliminary discussions pointing to a possible $60 billion fundraising.
  
  
• Mark Zuckerberg pledged that Meta will spend even more aggressively on AI in the year ahead, raising fresh concerns from investors who drove the stock down on worries the company may not have an obvious return on the massive investment.

No more busy helplines or confusing portals, Karnataka is bringing grievance redressal straight to WhatsApp.

• Citizens can now send a “Hi” to report complaints about potholes, water woes, or tax issues using text, voice, or images

An AI system instantly files and routes it to the right department.

• The state currently handles 2,000 monthly calls through its limited-hours helpline 

More on that here

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