One quick thing: Ola Electric files Rs 400-crore PLI claim for FY25

In today’s newsletter: 

• MFs love Zomato, Swiggy debuts new app
• Groww eyes valuation of up to $9 billion in IPO
• Over a dozen Indian AI startups to raise seed rounds

P.S.: The AI Edge drops Saturday: one smart read to make sense of AI every week.

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What do India’s mutual funds and Swiggy have in common this week? Both are doubling down on food bets!

Eternal has joined the ranks of the 10 most-owned stocks by mutual funds, overtaking majors like ITC, Maruti Suzuki and Sun Pharma.

• 43 mutual funds now hold Eternal shares worth Rs 71,746 crore

This is despite Eternal being the costliest stock in the Nifty index, with a trailing 12-month price-to-earnings ratio of nearly 950 times.

• Analysts expect Eternal’s food delivery margins and cash flow to bankroll Blinkit’s quick commerce play, projected to turn EBITDA profitable by Q4FY26

• SBI Mutual Fund leads with Rs 9,908 crore
  
  
• Kotak Mahindra follows at Rs 7,746 crore
  
  
• Motilal Oswal rounds out the top three at Rs 6,253 crore

Swiggy is launching Toing, a separate food delivery app aimed at price-conscious college students and freshers. 

• Unlike its main app, Toing will focus on meals in the Rs 100–150 range, competing head-on with Rapido’s budget delivery app Ownly

The company picked Pune over its usual testbed Bengaluru because of the city’s young, student-heavy demographic.

• Toing is Swiggy’s seventh standalone app, alongside Instamart, Snacc, Crew, Pyng, Dineout, and its main app

From investing through Groww to investing in Groww.

• The country’s most popular wealth-tech platform, Groww, is gearing up for one of the largest fintech IPOs in India

The Bengaluru-based broker will file an updated Draft Red Herring Prospectus (UDRHP) this week with plans to list by November. Groww is likely to seek up to $9 billion in valuation.

• A sombre market sentiment meant that Groww’s initial plan was to look for $7-8 billion valuation

• Despite regulatory headwinds, Groww posted a 3x growth in net profits for FY 25

• Its revenue grew 30%, even as competitors saw declining operational income

The financials have inspired confidence among potential investors and Groww to calibrate its IPO expectations.

Groww has around 15 million active investors, as per internal estimates. The company has been launching a slew of new products to increase the revenue per customer.

• The company is expected to launch a new wealth vertical after acquiring Fisdom

• It launched a margin trading facility a few months ago, a high-margin lending business

Groww also launched commodities recently.

• The company is likely to see a 10% equity dilution, implying an IPO size of around $800 million-1 billion

It is one of the few startups with high profitability and a new economy, leading a profit margin of 45%.

Dig deeper

Turns out, the quickest way to raise capital in 2025 is to add ‘AI’ to your deck.

Over a dozen AI startups are in talks with several VC funds to raise their Seed round, we were told. 

• Claim Health, Cubic, Theta Software, Cua, and Coinvent AI are all in talks with Peak XV Partners to raise a fresh round
  
  
• Elevation Capital is negotiating new deals with ScalarField, Sookti AI and Synth Bio
  
  
• Similarly, SuperMemory, Superbryn, Sherlocks AI and Affluense AI are all negotiating deals with investors such as Kalaari Capital, Zeropearl, BoldCap Ventures and others 

Most of these are companies developing AI agents or creating tools to facilitate their development. 

• A bulk of these deals will be sub $5 million each, we were told 

Another hot theme among AI investors is AI companion companies. 

• Lightspeed and 3one4 Capital are in talks with Kavana, a companion AI platform that aims to build AI humans that can talk to people 

• AI companion companies facilitate human-like conversations with bots, assist in elder care and even predict the future. All make money, which is attracting venture capital 

However, dealmaking is not easy. 

“AI dealmaking is madness right now in India,” an investor told us. 

Some are picking from a filtered list. 

“Some investors are just picking AI startups from Y Combinator’s Demo Day (YC Demo Day) and signing cheques to invest in them 

Not every investor is jumping right in. Some are waiting on the sidelines to see some scale before pumping in money. 

Dig deeper

RMG: Game Over. Esports: Respawn

Esports is powering up, attracting heavyweights like Tesla, Bisleri, and Red Bull to fuel its tournaments.

• With brands hitting play, the industry expects a 15–20% rise in ad spends

Categories such as FMCG, lifestyle, and BFSI—once cautious—are now actively making esports part of their core media mix.

• Meanwhile, a growing female fan base is drawing lifestyle and fashion brands deeper into the arena

Find out more

• Penske Media, the publisher of Rolling Stone, Variety, and Billboard, has sued Google, alleging its AI Overviews feature misuses their content to power responses and diverts traffic from their sites.
  
  
• Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said while the Indian industry is increasingly adopting artificial intelligence, the lack of an AI-ready workforce is creating a mismatch.

After OpenAI’s Ghibli-style trend painted feeds like animated storybooks, Google’s Gemini has gone filmi with the Banana AI Saree. 

• Think chiffon sarees, polka dots, and 90s nostalgia flooding Instagram timelines

But while users embrace the 90s aesthetic, cyber cops are flagging real-time risks.

• Because nobody wants a fraud subplot in their retro love story

Find out more

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