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In today’s newsletter: 

• Home services join quick commerce boom
• Govt notice to Google over gambling sites
• Banks push to raise GST threshold for merchants

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Home services are joining the quick commerce sprint, with startups racing to deliver cleaners, cooks, and handymen to your door in minutes.

Startups like Snabbit, Pronto, and Pync are racing to stitch together lightning-fast service webs across metros.

• Crafting fresh supply chains from scratch, they’re recruiting and training pros ready to jump into action.

What started as an occasional fix is now shifting into overdrive — this is a high-frequency hustle, not a one-off gig.

Quality and speed demand full control.

• Building fast means owning every step — from hiring and training to quick dispatch — no shortcuts

Snabbit’s “micro clusters,” Pronto’s hubs, and Urban Company’s hyper-local zones prove that tight ops are the secret sauce.

• As Snabbit founder Aayush Agarwal puts it, slashing worker downtime can triple output and turn profits from a pipe dream to reality

Growing fast means mastering local workforce nuances and building trust from the ground up.

• Each new city brings its own puzzle — local workers, trust, and retention aren’t one-size-fits-all, explains Pronto founder Anjali Sardana.

• Unlike groceries or food delivery, there’s no ready workforce of trained pros waiting to jump in; these startups must build their squads from scratch.

Moreover, founders say quick home services won’t sprint into tier-two cities overnight — they’re gearing up for a marathon, not a sprint.

Dig deeper

The taxman just went "all in" on a few gambling websites.

The Director General of GST Intelligence (DGCI) sent takedown notices to Google on August 1 for six online gaming and gambling websites that failed to register in India and pay taxes. 

• The notices cite Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act read with IT Rules 3(1)(d) and Section 14A(3) of the IGST Act 

The sites include MGM91.com, Shakunimama.com, Khelomama.com, 247majestic.com, Redgames1.com and karabet.in.

According to the DGCI, these platforms offered online money-gaming services, accepted payments via UPI, wallets, and net banking, but did not register in India or pay IGST.

• Moneycontrol was still able to access some of the named sites as of August 10

On August 5, the Centre told the Supreme Court that the full face value of bets should be taxed. 

• In October 2023, the government clarified that a 28% GST applies to the full face value of bets

Go deeper

India’s scan-to-pay habit is hitting a speed bump.

Recently, several trade bodies protested the commercial tax department's GST notices after their annual turnover crossed the Rs 40 lakh GST threshold.

• A few of them stopped accepting UPI payments in favour of cash

Finance ministry officials are now discussing whether the annual turnover threshold needs to be raised. 

• The traders' protests prompted several bankers to recommend raising the threshold to Rs 1 crore annual turnover

• Bankers are concerned about losing the momentum in digital payments due to compliance issues

• The merchant turnover data was calculated by the tax department based on UPI transaction values

The Department of Financial Services has now requested merchant data from the Reserve Bank of India and the National Payments Corporation of India, which runs UPI.

The finance ministry aims to reduce the compliance burden as it looks to implement a payment commission for merchant UPI transactions, known as the merchant discount rate (MDR).

• Last fiscal, the government reduced the UPI subsidy by one-third

Payment companies have requested the government to implement MDR for merchants with an annual turnover above Rs 1 crore to compensate for the subsidy reduction. 

• The RBI has also requested banks for data on the cost of running UPI

The finance ministry does not want GST compliance to be the reason why merchants abandon UPI.

"Probably the idea would be to reduce the compliance burden. The idea would be why to bother small businesses,” a senior government official with the finance ministry told us.

Dig deeper

On a Bengaluru factory floor, a wheeled humanoid glides between workstations, lifting, scanning and switching tools without pause. This is Sherpa Mecha, Ati Motors’ latest creation, built by Ati Motors for speed, strength, and precision.

• Capable of 1 million autonomous missions a year across global factories, it marks India’s bold push into industrial humanoids

Its debut comes as Indian robotics players like Addverb and Asimov race to bring humanoids into serious manufacturing roles.

Find out more

• Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices agreed to pay 15% of their revenues from chip sales to China to the US government as part of a deal with the Trump administration to secure export licenses.
  
  
• South Korea's SK Hynix forecasts that the market for a specialised form of memory chip designed for AI will grow 30% a year until 2030.

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